Forwards, Backwards and Somehow Else
by G.E Waldo
Summary: SEQUEL TO "FORWARD IN REVERSE". Wilson and House, present day. An exploration of what is and what might be. Pre-slash, slash, angst, hurt/comfort and those things that transverse time and space.
1. Chapter 1

FORWARDS, BACKWARDS AND SOMEHOW ELSE

(Sequel to Forward in Reverse)

By: GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House, present day. An exploration of what is and what might be. Pre-slash, slash, angst, and the things that transverse time and space.

Pairing: Wilson/House

Rated: M, NC-17, Mature, Adult.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I see nothing. I hear nothing!

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EVERYTHING LOOKS THE SAME, SOUNDS THE SAME, TASTES THE SAME..

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House tucked his helmet under his left arm and tapped the curved brass handle of his cane on the white front door, forgoing the brass knocker.

Wilson answered wearing his Saturday morning red and white striped robe, black slippers and the newest addition to his wardrobe - a white bandage wrapped around his head.

"Fashionable." House said.

Wilson stepped back to allow House room to step into the foyer of his condo. It was a modern, tasteful abode with the three levels, a six burner stove and Jacuzzi bathtub.

"How's the head?" House tossed his helmet on a small shoe bench and hung his coat on the attached wood coat rack. Wilson's place was expensive and from revolving tie-rack to polished fire-place pokers sitting neatly beside a natural gas fireplace.

Wilson's hand automatically went to his bandage. "Still aches but no more hallucinations or dizziness."

House nodded and said "Good.", kicking off his shoes. Wilson was particularly anal about the new finish on his expensive wood floors. "Must have been a nice settlement." House said as he walked into the living room and plopped himself down into a comfortably over-stuffed brown chair, propping his bad leg on the matching ottoman. Wilson had added to his already expensive collection of furniture with a huge, new mahogany bookcase plus everything hutch. It glowed from a fresh oiling. House looked around. No dust and everything gleamed. Maid service.

Wilson followed him and sat down on the three cushioned brown couch. "The bus company practically begged me to take the money. Almost a hundred grand because they were stupid enough to let me be stupid enough to accidently walk in front of their bus."

"It's the American dream." House commented. Wilson looked pale but still a thousand times better than when he was lying on the hospital bed in ICU, in a coma, machines feeding him, watering him and taking away the left-overs. Nineteen days and Wilson's heart had slowed three times, stopped (and was re-started) once, and steadily lost weight.

House had broke the record for the number of times a person can fearfully hold their breath without passing out.

"Like a coffee or something?" Wilson asked.

"Sure." House answered and let Wilson get it ready. Despite the healing head injury, Wilson was still more mobile on his two good legs than he was with his bad one, which was aching far more than usual of late.

House called from the living room to the kitchen which, compared to his one bedroom apartment, was the next state over. "When are you going to stop being a lazy ass and come back to work?"

Wilson returned to the livingroom. The odor of perking coffee followed him. "Sorry, I've been a little busy trying not to die."

_Sarcasm still intact_. _Check. _House thought. _Good sign_. He shed his leather jacket, letting it fall to the floor beside his chair. Decal-ed across the front of his T-shirt (one he'd clearly had printed up) was: _"My buddy died, went to heaven, came back and all he got me was this crappy T-shirt."_

"Very cute." Wilson said. "You're...forty-_eight_, right?"

"Forty-nine."

Wilson just realized something. "I missed your birthday."

House was indifferent. "Well, probably something to do with being in a coma or the fact that I've never given a damn about my birthday."

Wilson nodded as expected. But House was lying. He did care, but only so far as Wilson was involved. Wilson invariably got him something or took him out for drinks. "Well, when the head's all better..."

House shrugged. "Sure."

House wasn't actually in a hurry to see his friend back at work too soon. But if Wilson thought he was needed there,...being needed was a moral boost. And moral was good for the healing. Wilson liked to be needed. He said he'd suffered a nightmare in the coma, though had flatly refused to talk about it and _not _wanting to talk was _not_ like Wilson.

Almost dying could influence a person to think differently about life. Some sentimental types - and all one hundred eighty pounds of Wilson was one of those - came out of tragedies, the death of a loved one, accidents or even run-of-the-mill coma's viewing things and people as though they were all new. As though every day was a blessing or a gift from God. Foreman was prime example until House had straightened him out.

Shiny, happy people make lousy fellowships. Though they do sometimes make splendid best friends.

"I've a new case." House said.

Wilson, grateful for the distraction, "Yeah?" House sitting in his livingroom was...weird.

House was House. Greg had been Greg. And never the twain did meet.

But, Wilson kept having to remind himself, they were one and the same. He missed Greg terribly. House,...yes, he had missed House. And there he was, leg propped up going on about his new case, like nothing had ever happened between them. But then, nothing _had_. Wilson shook his head to dislodge the wasp's nest of thoughts. Everything and nothing made sense. Everything and nothing felt right.

He and House together in his house in the present, in the flesh, was...weird but shouldn't be.

Wilson felt caught between two worlds and, at the same instance, completely at home in neither. The world where he'd left his heart was gone forever because it had never been. And the one he had come back to, the real one, where his heart was encased in indecision and confusion, felt unreal. Ever since waking up, his mind had been grasping to find some sort of equilibrium. A level ground where he might find peace. Where he would belong in this new but old life of his, where House lived in his work, in his fridge, in his life, _in his face_.

In his living room House was talking. "Thirty-six year old female presented with elevated white count, pneumonia, swollen joints and a host of other weird symptoms that so far add up to several possible diseases, most fatal. So far, we've managed to make her a whole lot worse. If I don't make a diagnosis soon, prognosis is - she's going to die."

Come on, Wilson forget it. It wasn't _real._ "White count suggests infection, that would account for the pneumonia." Wilson ventured, happy with his performance of interest and fake contentment. "Or small cell lung cancer."

"And the joints?"

"Weak kidney function, could also be due to infection."

"But not lung cancer."

Wilson agreed with a nod. He was circling the level field of normalcy, at least intellectually. Even if it didn't really help, at least he could appreciate. Getting back to work -- the American cure for whatever ails you--work your ass off. "Underlying arthritis could account for the joint swelling."

"Negative for RH."

"Sedentary lifestyle can cause fluid retention. Or too much caffeine." Which reminded him. "Coffee's probably done." This time House followed Wilson into his kitchen and they poured coffee's. Wilson thickened his with a mountain of sugar and enough cream to make it almost white. He sat at the table.

House stirred in a touch of sugar and a not as much cream -- its appearance remained coffee-like. Leaning against the counter, House scratched his chin whiskers and popped a Vicodin.

Without thinking, "Still on those?" Wilson asked.

House threw him a puzzled look. ""_Still_"?"

"I mean, it seems like you were cutting down before I was..." Wilson felt House's eyes on him, "...hit by the bus." He finished idiotically.

"Stepping under a bus." House commented, a suspicious eye on Wilson's bandages, "clearly not a brain booster." House shook the little pill bottle absent-mindedly. "I grew tired," he said, "of worrying about being addicted to Vicodin. So I gave it up."

Wilson did a double-take. "But you just - isn't that...you gave up Vicodin?"

"Nope. Just worrying."

Wilson stood up, too quickly, a wave of pain added to the headache already nestled between his eyes. "More coffee?"

House shook his head. "Home." He moved with some difficulty. More than average for him. "Porn. Dinner. Beer. Sleep. Probably in that order."

"Leg okay?" Wilson asked, not failing to notice his slower and stiffer walk.

"Leg's super." He answered.

"Fine. Don't tell me." Despite the confusion of heart and his unsettled mind, Wilson was reluctant to have House leave so quickly. "Hey,...you could stay for dinner if you want. Pizza guy delivers to this neighborhood too. Better tips though."

House smirked. "Statistics show those with the least disposable income, tend to give the most to charity."

"I'll remember that next time a street bum delivers my pizza." Wilson tossed a thumb over his shoulder. "Seriously. I've got beer. And not that soda you drink. This stuff's imported."

House's eyes lit up. "Guinness?"

"Kilkenny, and you know you love me for it."

"Chilled glasses? Gotta have chilled glasses for Guinness." House sat back down.

"You're high maintenance, House." But Wilson was delighted his offer had been accepted. He didn't want to be alone tonight.

"I'm not the one who owns a _hair dryer_."

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HE KNOWS WHERE I AM.

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It took Wilson a couple of weeks to discover that this place and time, these people, were really his life. He did his best to settle back into his regular regime of cancer patients, lunches with House, jokes with House. He even partook in the occasional shouting match with House, a few of which - incredibly - he won.

Which was out-of-the-ordinary and he didn't understand why. What they fought over was nothing new. House's risks with patient safety or his aversion to treating people with anything above barely contained disdain. These things they had often fought over. But House had actually backed down once or twice.

Wilson muddled over it on his own. There was a time he would have discussed it with Cuddy to, if for no other reason, share the worry and get ease his mind a little. Maybe House was trying to go easy on him.

House _was_ the House he remembered. Wilson was so deep in thought over it that a finger poked him in the back. "Hey Wilson, move on."

Wilson quickly moved forward in the cafeteria line, catching up to the nameless people in front. On his tray was a hamburger and coffee. He paid and found a table by himself near the windows.

He used to eat hamburgers with Greg.

Wilson bit into it but it tasted greasy and bitter in his mouth. Not like he "remembered".

"Hey." House plopped himself down in the chair across from him. Looked at Wilson's plate.

"Hamburger?" He said a little startled. "Joining the rest of North America at last?" House asked and bit into his own double cheeseburger. A mountain of steak fries waited their turn, smothered in ketchup.

Wilson suppressed a shudder. He played with his own burger, trying to look like he was enjoying it while studying House's face as the other man ate.

It was a handsome face but unaware of itself. Unconcerned about it's own attractiveness and uncaring about what people thought of it. Lined, older, a little more sour in it's expressions, seasoned with what life had thrown at it. Like Greg and unlike Greg. Wilson sighed and ate the awful hamburger.

And House watched Wilson, knowing Wilson had been studying _him_ while trying to look like he hadn't been. Wilson had been doing a lot of that lately - staring then looking away - as though trying to see something more than what was before his eyes. They both had been doing it. Like two friends who'd hadn't seen each other for decades, trying to sort through the changes and locate those things they used to know.

Wilson ate his bitter hamburger and tried to let his mind be distracted by the lunch crowd.

House chewed a french fry and tried not to stare at Wilson. He'd really missed him.

Still did.

XXX

Quitting time came and went for House. A new case kept him after hours as long as he had the energy for it and his leg wasn't bothering him too badly. Though tonight it was getting bad again.

He popped two Vicodin and sipped some strong coffee. The patient was stable, but no better, and his fellowships had all gone home. The conference room was in darkness and only a small lamp illuminated House's desk.

Wilson walked by his office, not raising his eyes off the floor. No good-night nod through the glass doors even. Weird.

House was pretty sure Wilson wasn't mad at him about anything. He'd appeared both depressed and preoccupied. House limped to the door and looked down the hall after him.

When at the end of the hall Wilson turned right instead of left - the way to the main elevators - House grabbed his leather jacket, his cane and followed.

He kept to a good distance as Wilson took the lesser used staff elevator to the ground floor and slipped out a side employees only exit. It led to the park-area and the one road that bisected the huge grounds, residences and main hospital that made up Princeton Plainsborough.

Wilson walked to the bus top and sat down. Which was weird since House knew Wilson had driven his car in that morning. He saw a faint orange glow come to life near Wilson's mouth and that was weirder still.

House stepped out of the dark and into the light of the street lamp shining down on his friend on the bench. "You don't smoke." House said, making Wilson jump.

Wilson just sighed and went back to his cigarette, leaning his elbows on his knees. His body language said a lot. Wilson himself said nothing.

"Want one?"

House accepted a cigarette and lit it. He only smoked once in a while and only socially and then only cigars. He'd given cigarettes up during his fellowship years. No time or money.

They both sucked on their cigarette for a few minutes, enjoying the night air and the relative quiet. A few people walked across the grounds. A few waited farther down the street by the bus shelter.

House asked, "Everything okay?"

Wilson nodded but it was a lie. He knew House knew it was a lie too. He was aching for Greg. He would happily accept House if House was his to have, but he wasn't. "Not really." He admitted.

"What's up?"

Wilson tried to think up a plausible lie. He wanted to say: "I'm totally in love with...Greg House. And, yeah, that's you but not _really_ you because he was a figment of a hallucination I had during which Greg and I lived together. For a year and half we fucked, swallowed each others tongues, made love and were as happy as two people could be in this stinking world. But that wasn't real--so they tell me. However, my _feelings_ were, and are, real and _you're_ real. So I'm feeling lonely and lost and I'm missing hallucination Greg so much I can't stand it. No, I'm not okay. I'm completely _fucked_ and I can't do a goddamn thing to change it."

When he'd woken up in that hospital room, he'd felt a tidal wave of joy at seeing House's face. Gregory House was alive and that's the only thing he had wanted.

Then gradually he'd come to thoroughly understand that House wasn't Greg. Well, was and wasn't. Greg had been his lover. House was his friend. The more he saw House's face, the more he missed Greg's. And he had come to the bus bench to think about Greg. To imagine his face, dream about his smell and the way his skin felt when he laid on him at night. The way he looked after a thorough screw. So sexy and alluring. So young and free. So _his._

Now here was House, Gregory House, sitting beside him on the bench in almost the exact same spot but House was so not the same. So just a friend. So older, bitter and..._injured_--and not just in his leg.

And so _not_ his.

Unfair, evil fucking world.

Wilson choose a tiny portion of that silent confession. "I'm feeling a little lost I guess."

House nodded. "Wanna a get a beer?" He was a little surprised when Wilson shook his head no.

Instead, Wilson stood, gathered up his briefcase and coat and said "Gonna' go home." and walked away toward the employee parking lot.

Wilson did not dare look back. He did not dare acknowledge the feelings for House that he would like to. Feelings contrary and confusing. He loved and wanted Greg House (at least he thought he did) _and_ he wanted nothing to do with him.

But being around House, even just sitting there on that bench with him, had caused a deep seated emotional and sexual aching in his mind and body. It was becoming harder each day to spend time with House without House being Greg. He didn't know what to do about it, but he had to do something soon or he would go crazy. Or, worse, he would slip up and spill the whole story.

Ironically that would probably solve his problem.

At his car he could see in the dark distance House limping painfully back toward the side entrance. His leg must be hurting a great deal for him to be moving so slowly.

Wilson felt a twinge of guilt that he hadn't taken up House's offer for a beer. A wave of unfamiliar pity for House washed over him, something he had never allowed before. Seeing House limp was all new again. It looked wrong on him. Greg had been so strong and mobile.

Wilson was overcome with a terrible sadness for House and for himself. At the thought of Greg, he choked up, his lover still so fresh in his mind. Still so acutely painful.

A thought occurred to him. One so unlike him that even he was surprised: If only he hadn't woken up.

XXX

"Differential diagnosis." House said to his team.

Thirteen, Kutner and Taub all had their eyes on their boss rather than the white board. They all offered their medical opinions, House had shot some down, wrote down others, added his own and barked out orders for the tests he wanted them to do.

They had gone, taken the samples needed, run the cultures and done the tests. Making sure their patient of four weeks was stable and comfortable, they had all returned to the conference room and sat watching House. Two weeks was thus far the longest House had gone without a diagnosis. Foreman was getting on edge. Cuddy had blossomed to downright nervous.

That morning House had limped in sloth-like, by-passed pouring himself a mug of coffee and sat down at his desk, immediately propping his leg up on the corner of it. Usually he tried to hide it if his leg was worse than usual. This morning he had rubbed it openly, grimacing.

Post differential Kutner and the others huddled to whisper about him when Doctor Foreman entered and hung his coat. He wore, as was his habit, a dark suit with white shirt and tie. He was fresh shaved and alert. Whenever House was absent, Foreman was the man in charge and for good reason. He was a clever neurologist who'd trained under House for three years and had now worked with him for just over six months.

He turned his dark, handsome face to the three with their heads together. "House gossiping I assume." He glanced into the office where House sat rubbing his thigh.

The three underlings offered their opinions of the House trouble.

Thirteen spoke. "He didn't even get a coffee. We did the differential, then he just went in there and sat down. We ran the tests." She explained to Foreman.

Taub was indifferent toward House other than appreciating the opportunity for a fellowship under the brilliant diagnostician, and was determined to prove himself.

Thirteen wasn't as confident as Taub, but knew she was at least as good at her job as Kutner, maybe better. She disliked House altogether and so wasn't afraid of him one bit. "He never talks about it." Referring to his leg.

"Don't ask him." Foreman advised. "He wouldn't tell you anyway."

Kutner looked over at his boss. "He's cranky. More than his usual cranky. Brat kid with his sling-shot taken away cranky." He was a smidgen worried because he liked House, sort of, though felt a little afraid of him too. Kutner also liked his job and was proud that he'd made one of the three spots. He'd already written his mother about it. She'd already sent him a gift and card full of praise. House suddenly becoming too sick to work would mean they wouldn't be working either. That would hugely suck.

Kutner rose and poured a coffee, stirring in cream and a half sugar. The way House drank it.

Foreman watched him. "That won't work."

Kutner looked around. "What? I'm getting him a coffee. His leg obviously hurts."

"It won't curry you any favor with him. Friend or employee, House treats everyone the same - like crap." Foreman said.

Kutner ignored the well meaning advice and delivered the coffee to House. They saw House eye him suspiciously but accept the cup.

"How's our patient?" Foreman asked. The team brought him up to date on her condition.

Foreman listened with half his attention on House sitting in his office, apparently momentarily unconcerned with his teams test results. With his leg up and his eyes closed, House appeared to have settled in for the day. Foreman walked through the doors, feeling three sets of curious eyes on his back. He went and drew the vertical blinds, giving House and himself the privacy to speak.

House opened his eyes when he heard the door open and followed Foreman's actions without commenting.

"Are you going to be of use today? " Foreman asked, not without sympathy. "Because if not, maybe you should go home. Rest the leg."

House didn't take his eyes off his thigh, but said, "My leg got more sleep last night than I did."

"House, when you're in pain, you don't always make sense."

"And when your making sense, you're always a pain. My leg is fine." As though to prove it, he eased it to the floor and stood, a little more hunched over than usual.

Foreman did not fail to note it. "Right." He said sarcastically, "Nothing wrong with you at all." He gave up the concern and turned away. "Fine."

House grabbed his cane and followed Foreman into the conference room. "Tests done? Results?" House asked the group.

They summed up what they had already told Foreman.

"Other than having all the signs of an infection," Taub said, "she has no infections."

"But now a fever." Thirteen added.

"And her white count's still up."

House looked over the symptoms on the white board, narrowing his eyes in thought. He was sweating and pale.

The group could see it for themselves. He looked bad. And he clearly had nothing more to say for the moment. House turned to leave.

"Where are you going?" Foreman asked.

"To think." He answered. He looked back, speaking specifically of Foreman, "Mind your mamma kids."

Foreman threw him a dirty look. "I'm going to call Chase and Cameron for a consult." He said to House's back.

House did turn around at that. But after a second, decided not to argue it. "Fine." He said. He had bigger legs to fry.

XXX

I DON'T HAVE TO GO TO DETROIT TO KNOW THAT IT SMELLS.

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House hobbled into Wilson's office. "Hi." He said. "I'm looking for a good doctor. You know any?" He sat down in the visitor's chair.

Wilson noted that, despite leaning heavily on his cane, House had been hobbling around as slowly as before. It was the second time in three days Wilson had seen House's tell-tale limp become almost a sideways lurch. "Yes." Wilson answered. "But he wouldn't help you. He hates people and is a total jerk." He gestured to House's inability to get comfortably settled in the chair. House had adopted a left-cheek one sided tilt. "So, are you going to tell me what's up with the leg or has Cuddy just chewed your ass off again?"

Wilson had poured himself into his job for the last few days. It had helped him to center himself, somewhat. He could act normal at least, if not feel normal.

"Leg's extra bitchy lately. It must be her time of the month." Since House had not denied it was a problem, it meant his leg really _was_ worse. "Probably scar tissue. Maybe I ought to do an MRI..see how bad it is."

Wilson's heart skipped a beat. That House had freely mentioned MRI-ing the leg meant it _really_ was hurting, and _really_ a lot.

"Maybe an adjustment in your med's might help too." That wouldn't happen of course. Incredible, Wilson thought quizzically, how very much everything had stayed the same. Or returned to it's place. All pieces settling into their designated slots like figurines on a game board. All was just as before. House and his leg pain and popping Vicodin, and himself with his worry over the leg plus his silent bitching about House's over-use of the Vicodin.

Wilson was reminded of lines from a childhood story: "Return, return to the beginning. Go back, go back to yesterday. Today is tomorrow's past. So make it last, make it last..."

He was losing his mind for sure.

House nodded. "Right. As long as the adjustment is more pain killers and not less." He grimaced. "Gimme' a hand with the MRI?"

Wilson was worried, he realized. At least his mushy heart where House's health was concerned acted the same in both worlds. But not only that -- he was grateful to have something to do. "Of course."

XXX

House undressed and lay down on the MRI table. Wilson pushed House into the round, claustrophobia devise and then settled himself at the controls on the other side of the large window. He kept his eye on the screen. "Lay very still." He said needlessly into the mike. It would take about a half hour to MRI the whole thigh and for the computer to start spitting out an image on the screen before him.

"Tell me a story." House said from the booth, and Wilson smiled. This was a familiar part of their old routine. Their old, _old_ routine. This mutual buddy-friendship was no where near the type of relationship he wanted, but it was a good light year from House being dead and not being around at all. He felt bad that he didn't feel better about that.

Wilson warmed, though, to House's playfulness, and spoke into the mike. "There once was this cantankerous old doctor named House-"

"-a _lesbian_ story."

"Two cantankerous, old female orangutans..."

"Fine! Then talk about something that'll make this next mind numbing half hour go faster."

"Wanna' hear about my newest cancer case? She's-"

"-I said _faster."_

Wilson thought of a very pornographic story he could relate but House would be embarrassed since he was sort of the star. "It's good to be back." Wilson said. It had just popped out, and he wasn't sure how House might take it. And, despite his mixed up feelings of late and the loneliness, it was true.

"Just for the record, you didn't actually go anywhere." House cleared his throat. "Good to have you back. Touchy-feely moment over. Can we get back to the task at hand now?"

_Well, that was okay. _House hadn't even mocked him. so though he wasn't sharing bodily fluids with House, they were sharing lives again and Wilson would have to somehow be content with that. He felt suddenly more light-hearted, and younger, than he'd felt in the few weeks since he had awakened. Though the memories - or false memories - of nights spent under the covers with Greg, and then his terrible death, still hurt, they would, he hoped, eventually heal. Wilson felt, at least for the time being, for the moment at least, somewhere in the ball park of his old self. House was alive and for now that's all he ought to care about.

That's all he _would_ care about. _Yes. I've decided._

House hadn't said anything for a few minutes. "House? Are you asleep?"

"Of course I'm asleep. Who could stay awake on this nice, hard table?"

Life in the aftermath of delight and tragedy. Not so bad, really. Wilson assured himself that it would get better. Days, weeks, months,...soon years would go by and he would feel his old self and House would still be there. Maybe not they way he really wanted, but close. His friend, his buddy, a special person in his life.

Time heals all wounds.

Yes. Things were going to be okay.

A green flashing light told him the MRI was nearing completion. Still smiling at House's sarcasm - he would never again get tired of hearing it - Wilson took a look at the screen . At cursory glance, things inside House's thigh looked as usual.

Wilson squinted. Except...

Then he punched in a command for a closer view. Except for...

Using his sleeve he wiped a fine coating of dust from the screen.

Scar tissue build-up. That's all it was._ Scar tissue is often denser than the healthy surrounding tissue._

"Well?" House asked from the inside the MRI unit.

Wilson didn't answer. The "except" was, had to be, scar tissue. After five years, not surprising. Only it didn't look quite right for scar tissue. _Where_ it was didn't seem correct either. It's placement seemed to be associated with House's femoral nerve, where most of the damage was located. A large swelling almost, twice the diameter of the nerve below it. And, yes, denser.

Wilson went through it in his head. Scar tissue can build up on nerves, but rarely. Scar tissue requires no blood supply but does result from friction. Pseudo regeneration of cells can occur but thus far only in a laboratory setting. But nerves do have blood supply and thus could become...

Wilson got a hard graph of the screen and a print out of the MRI's interpretation of what Wilson's human eyes were seeing. The machine obeyed, producing in a few minutes an eleven by eight sheet of paper and a hard copy graph of his friend's thigh with the "except".

Wilson turned his face away from the interior room where House was climbing out of the MRI without waiting for Wilson to enter and help him.

"Hey..." House called, obviously puzzled by Wilson's delay. "Need a little help here." Came House's muffled, impatient request. "Where're my clothes?" He called again.

Wilson held the film in his hands. He could not be seeing what he thought he was seeing. Things had shifted again. Right. Things, the world, time, space, fate and him, had changed once more. A dream, a hallucination. He hoped to a contrary god in his nice, pain-free, peaceful heavenly zone it was all in his mind.

But not this.

Not what was laying in his slightly trembling hand, staring back at him with its coldly presented facts.

Wilson had an urge to look around to see if the world had changed shape. Only, of course, nothing had altered. House in his hospital gown was still the House he knew. The Diagnostician and friend. The MRI lab was still the MRI lab.

And he was still Wilson, in the here and now, holding a picture of things to come. A portrait of the future. Only not his future - indirectly. It was House's future and Wilson, not by mental telepathy or divination or even a turn of the cards, but by experience, knew exactly what it held for him.

Wilson knew because, despite his own mind trying to deny what he knew, he was the cancer specialist.

And he understood, right now at this moment, that he could not face House. Would not find the right words to tell him the news no one had ever even considered let alone expected. Not because House couldn't handle the news. He, Wilson, wasn't ready to.

_The first stage of grief is denial._

Ignoring House's annoyed demand for his clothes and knowing a puzzled House was watching him leave, Wilson exited the MRI room as fast as he could. Outside in the hall, he leaned against the cool wall with one hand. His other hand shook while holding the graph up to the inferior hallway overhead lights.

Maybe in the last thirty seconds, something on the MRI might have changed. Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps he hadn't looked carefully enough. It wasn't possible that House had _this_. Terrible things can't happen to the same man again and again. It was hateful. It was unfair even in the endless unfairness of the world and her perverse sense of irony. It could _not _be.

Wilson walked away down the hall in no chosen direction, his feet moving of their own accord until he found himself on his office balcony, once more holding the graph up to the sunny sky, knowing he'd made a mistake in the MRI room. He _had_ to have.

It _was_ a smudge. It was a shadow. House had moved, his leg had spasm-ed. Something had produced that white, dense, elongated mark on the graph. He refused to accept the alternative.

Only, there was none.

Wilson crumpled up the piece of paper and pitched it over the balcony. It was a useless gesture, bringing no relief and changing nothing. Not caring who heard him and with balled fists he vented his outraged to a God he no longer believed in "You son-of-a-_bitch!" _

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PAIN MAKES US MAKE BAD DECISIONS. FEAR OF PAIN IS ALMOST AS BIG A MOTIVATOR.

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Cuddy did not look up as the door to her office swung open and a man entered. It had to be House. Everyone else knocked. "No you can't get out of your clinic hours tomorrow." She said without waiting for her visitor to speak.

When no answer was forthcoming, she finally raised her head.

Wilson had sat and was waiting very patiently. Well, not patiently. Morose would be more in tune to his body language. Cuddy pushed aside her stack of paperwork.

"What's the matter with you?"

Wilson was fingering an MRI graph in his left hand, stroking the edge of it with the fingers of his right like it was an old friend. His face was the color of chalk.

"This," He started. Stopped. Cleared his throat. "This is a MRI graph I took forty minutes ago of House's leg. There is a growth on his femoral nerve and it appears to be intruding into the surrounding muscle - what's left of it." He held the graph in both his hands for a few seconds, staring at it again himself. He felt hollow and weighted down. Then he handed it to her. "House has cancer."

Cuddy stared. Shook her head. Narrowed her eyes. "If this is some puerile joke you two have cooked up-" But she took the graph and held it up to the overhead lights.

Her face recognized the abnormality easily enough. For Wilson it confirmed the grim diagnosis he already knew was true. And now Cuddy knew it too and somehow, he hated her for it.

Wilson did not look at Cuddy but the corner of her desk as he revealed things he had said to no one yet. Not even House. "It is most likely a non-neurofibrosarcoma." He coughed. "A peripheral nerve sheath tumor." He continued before she had a chance to speak doubting words.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. A subconscious effort to distract himself from news he wished did not have to be said. "From it's placement and density, I believe it's a solitary, sporadic schwannoma-type with possible involvement of the femur."

Cuddy licked her lips and took a deep breath to composed herself. "How could this possibly be?" She tried to mentally sort the facts that Wilson had clinically presented. Cuddy heard the words "cancer" and "House", saying them silently but not believing. Not agreeing. Not yet.

"Surely House would have noticed a change in his leg? Pressure, discomfort..?"

Wilson almost smiled from the irony. "The only symptom would have been pain."

Cuddy bit her lip. "Is it...do you think it's..?"

"We'll do an aspiration, get a sample..." Images flashed through his mind. Pictures, one after another, of his patients. So many. So many now dead. As the cancer had raged through their bodies, some had become virtual corpses before even breathing their last. He drove the horrific thoughts from his mind, not wanting to think that about Gregory House. _Never, never_...

"If it is,.." Wilson considered the "m" word but rejected it. Standing up, "I'll get started on the biopsy. Don't say anything to his team yet. House would raise a stink about it."

"Please tell me the results right away."

Wilson nodded and Cuddy watched him leave. Only then did she let the sadness come over her, but until they knew for certain it was real, she would not cry.

XXX

The moment he saw Wilson's strictly controlled features, House had guessed something on the MRI had been off. He'd had to gather up his clothes in the change room outside the MRI lab, angry at having to bare his ass in a public hallway to access it. What idiot architect would _not_ put a connecting door from the change room to the MRI lab? Then he had gone Wilson hunting, finding him in his office scanning the graph with his oncologist's eye.

"I want to do a CT." Wilson said as soon as House entered and sat down.

So there was something there. "Why can't you just say what you already know it is?"

Wilson swallowed. "One MRI is hardly a diagnosis."

"Do a biopsy."

"We will. But you can't be sure it's anything more than scar tissue."

"Do the biopsy. Then we both won't not be sure."

XXX

House had reluctantly changed into a new drab-grey gown and lay still on the hospital bed. Wilson had admitted him to general ward. Not the cancer ward. _We're not going there yet_.

Wilson applied topical lidocaine to the appropriate spot on House's wasted right thigh muscle. "This will pinch." He warned him, and thrust the long aspiration needle quickly and deeply into House's thigh. It's tiny pinchers bit a fractional piece out of the mystery growth. House gasped a bit his lip. But Wilson efficiently withdrew it just as quickly. "Done."

Leaving House to rest propped up on his pillows, Wilson said, "I'll get this to the lab." He made a hasty exit.

XXX

The tiny piece of House's leg invader lay between slides under Wilson's trained eye, giving up their secrets. He stayed glued to the microscopes's eye-piece refusing to accept the possibility that the words malignant loomed on the horizon. Even though he knew it was in fact a probability, Wilson refused to consider it. Not yet. It was too soon. Too soon medically. Too soon for careful, measured, reasonable thinking.

Too soon for him. Wilson took a moment to study the slide. The lay of the cells, the growth patterns _might_ be cancerous, but not conclusively. Wilson took a breath in and blew it out. He studied the numbers the scope had spit out. He read them again and then a third time. No doubt was left. His emotions threatened to spiral out of control and he had to sit down for a moment.

Wilson let his heart have its few seconds of disbelief and grieving rage. Then he returned to House's room and sat beside his bed, saying softly. "I have the results."

The quiet fear in his voice told House everything. "It's malignant." He said to Wilson.

Wilson nodded and read: "The...immuno-chemistry indicate that the tumor cells express vimentin, keratin, and epithelial membrane antigen. That tells us it is malignant."

House sighed. There was nothing to say.

XXX

Cuddy listened with a sinking heart as Wilson related the facts to her of House's condition.

"This type of neoplasm is common to soft tissue, although it's rare. And it's often deadly. When it does respond to treatment, there is still a high incidence of recurrence."

Cuddy was white. "Is there any part of this that might be good news, relatively speaking?"

Wilson cleared a painful throat and continued as though the question had not been asked. "And despite, to all intents and purposes, completely successful resections, in most cases, it metastasises." _So, no, there is no good news about any of this._

Wilson flipped through House's file. He, Plainsborough's chief oncologist, had a file now on his best friend. A patient file for his closest friend's new and most deadly illness; Greg House's cancer. Within Wilson's specialty, House might become another statistic.

His face pale and quietly furious, "It is a devastating type of cancer and I wish to _hell_ I'd caught it earlier." Wilson threw the file down on her desk.

Cuddy tried her soothing voice. "You couldn't have known."

"Oh, _please_." He said. "House has been telling us for over a year that his pain was getting worse. We listened politely." Wilson itemized, pacing in front of her. "We patronized him, we dismissed him and walked away, chalking his worsening pain up to narcotic resistance. It was his growing dependance on Vicodin, we told him - and ourselves. We said it was the alcohol. Or he needed PT, or more rest, cold compresses, hot compresses, he needed to relax more. Meditation - _yeah!_ Go home, put your agonizing leg with the hole in it on a nice cushion and think about flowers and sunshine and happy children running up and down on green grass."

Wilson ran frustrated, regretful fingers through his hair. "The increased pain was all _his_ fault - that's what we assumed. Not once did we act like doctors and consider that the pain, that his leg, was actually, _really_ getting worse."

"You took an MRI.."

"That MRI was over two years ago."

"Beating ourselves up for what we _didn't_ do isn't going to help. What treatment options are there? What _can_ be done?"

Wilson rubbed his temple. "Radiation. Chemo',...I hesitate to suggest resection. I've only ever seen one that didn't metastasize within a year post surgery."

Cuddy sucked in a quick breath over that. Wilson was always so optimistic with his patients. So supportive and encouraging as to hope. But they were strangers. Temporary clients.

House was his best friend. Wilson would still hope. In his heart, he would hold out to the very last breath for House, that his friend would survive this. But that didn't mean his hope was rational and they both knew it. It just meant the hope was desperate.

Wilson stopped pacing and sat again. An image of young beautiful, lover Greg crossed his mind one moment, and then dead Greg the next. He remembered House pre-infarction, athletic and constantly active. He remembered House post-infarction, crippled, slowed down, in constant pain. Then the image of Greg's body beneath the bus. The blood, the death, the lover he acutely missed to this miserable moment. And he thought of House and the terrible thing that was growing in his leg. Death from without or within. It was still death and Fate was a rotten, mean, merciless whore.

Wilson rubbed his face to relieve the tension. It didn't work. Nothing would change any of this. Nothing would alter that he could not bear up to watching Gregory House die again. Not again. Greg or House - this man he adored in that time, the one in this place - House's coming to and end, was beyond his ability to survive. Wilson did not believe he could endure it and come out the other side sane.

Platitudes and hope got stuck in his throat. Other words escaped but only after great effort. Crawling weakly from his larynx, "I'm,..ahem,..I'm going to recommend Strong for treatment." He snatched a look at Cuddy and saw her puzzlement.

Cuddy frowned. "Strong?? At University Medical? Why?"

Wilson fidgeted and looked at his shoes. "I...can't be objective. House is my friend-"

"-He's a cancer patient _here_ and you're our chief oncologist."

"Strong is excellent."

"You're better."

Wilson sighed, rested his hands on his square hips. "It would be ethically unsound for me to treat a friend. Objectivity is a must..."

Cuddy stood and walked around her desk to face him. "Not with you it isn't. It never has been. You _lived_ with a cancer patient."

"I knew she was dying. I-"

Cuddy saw he was having difficulty with this. Great difficulty. It was House. Wilson cared deeply about House. Maybe Wilson was right. Maybe he wasn't the best doctor in this case. But, "What if House refuses Strong? What if he wants you?"

"I'll have to say no." Wilson rubbed his face, shook his head. Turned dark, turmoil-ed eyes to his boss. "House might ask for me, but he'll also understand my answer. He'll agree. I can't treat him."

Then he said something he was pretty sure he didn't believe. "House will be fine without me."

"Forgive me but you didn't see him." Cuddy said to her underling.

While she elaborated, Wilson rubbed the back of his neck and tried to concentrate on feeling right about his decision. He sat down again.

"House was a mess when he thought you were dying." Cuddy gestured at the center of his chest. "Your heart stopped. Your brain activity nearly flat-lined" When Wilson said nothing, "He was a ghost walking through these halls, Wilson. I don't think you understand how important you are to him."

Defending himself, "He's important to me too."

"Then go tell him that. House has cancer. He's sick. He's going to need you."

Wilson felt the water in his eyes wanting to trail down the sides of his face. He held them back. "There are things you don't understand..about this."

"Then acquaint me with them."

Wilson told her a condensed version of his hallucinatory alternate life.

Cuddy listened patiently but, "It wasn't _real." _She exclaimed

The reaction he expected. "It _felt_ real. It still does."

Cuddy tried to sort through Wilson's irrational justification for his actions. She couldn't. "So you regret the "relationship"," she spoke the word in quotes, "you had with...him. Because you watched him die, you don't want to help our real House stay alive?"

"Of course I _want_ to. I _can't!" _Even to his own ears it sounded lame and cowardly. But he also knew the idea of House dying terrified him. He just wasn't sure he'd live through it himself.

Cuddy was not convinced. "So, it's okay if House dies. It's just not okay if you have to watch."

"It's not "okay"!" Maybe no one could really understand what it is he'd had, had felt with Greg. Even though it had not been real. He shouted the next thought, "It was as powerful, maybe more so, than what I feel for House now. Here in...reality!" He begged Cuddy to understand. _See it._ He told her silently. _Get it._

Cuddy words broke through the images racing across his vision. "It was a _dream." _She said.

And he answered the same as before, defeated. Deflated."But it _felt_ real." For him, in each of the cells of his body, it had been real, through and through. God, he even remembered the way Greg sweated, the texture of his skin, the rumblings of his digestive tract against his own lips when he kissed Greg's stomach. The smell of his fleshly showered skin or semen. The alcohol on his breath, each and every soft hair on his head and body. Every fucking part Wilson remembered in every sense as though it had been last night. As though Greg were waiting for him at home.

He wanted that again. He wanted Greg.

But to them it would never be seen as anything other than a hallucination. They would never comprehend the impact -- the _imprint_ of that life once lived on his hopes and dreams now. What he wished for in life. How he had been changed. Profoundly. Forever.

Cuddy -- no one -- could ever see the changes. They would never feel and taste the shifting of his consciousness. He, Wilson, was not the same person. When he had awoken, he had thought he was, for a time. But each day the chasm between himself and the man who had lived and loved Greg were drifting so far apart, they were becoming strangers to each other. Never would be brought together again. There were two Wilson's, as there were two Greg's. His Greg had died, and he, some horrible fucking how, had brought the other Wilson with him. Had _become_ him.

The Wilson from before, who ate Chinese food with House and wrote his prescriptions, bailed his ass out of jail, nearly saw him kill himself with pills and booze; that Wilson was fading like an old stain.

There was only one more thing, useless words of course, to try and make her understand. "I loved Greg." He could not meet her eyes. She and this life they were occupying, were as ghostly as the old Wilson was becoming.

"So in turn, you love House." She finished.

Wilson nodded. Yes he did. Perhaps not as he had loved Greg, but enough. Enough to make the concept of his death cut almost as deeply. Bloody his heart almost as red as the pool under the bus.

Greg House in the here and now was probably going to die. House himself would agree. Even the numbers fit. "I can't watch him die again." Wilson was miserable. "I just can't."

Cuddy nodded. She felt bad for Wilson, and tried to understand and sympathize, really. But House was her priority. He was the one in extreme need, and it would only get worse for him. She played her last card. "And what if he lives?"

Wilson stared at her. He had considered that of course. He could spend six months or a year not treating House, not seeing him much, leaving his therapy to other physicians and then House might survive it. He might come out all right. A one in ten chance but possible.

How would he feel knowing he had abandoned House? How would House feel? Could he even face House again? Re-start the friendship - if it could be salvaged at all?

Wilson tried not to, but he very quietly, in his boss's office, started to cry silently. Right there in front of Cuddy. He had run out of words.

XXX

"House." Cuddy found him where he'd been for days. In the hallway outside ICU. Wilson had been in a coma for eleven days and showed no signs of coming out of it. Cuddy knew the longer he was in it, the less likely he would ever wake up. House knew it too.

House looked at her briefly before his eyes drifted back to the ICU main double doors. Occasionally one swung open and a doctor or nurse passed through going in one direction or the other.

House knew why she was there and spoke before she had a chance to ask the question. "My patient is stable." He said. "We have her on broad spectrum anti-biotic's."

"And what is your team doing to advance her treatment while you're loitering here?"

"Everything I told them to do. Continue with the cultures. Monitor her condition until we come up with something that makes sense."

"What do you think it might be?" She asked.

House didn't take his eyes off the ICU doors. "It might be cancer, or an unknown infectious agent or alien possession, but every test shows it's not any of those."

Cuddy watched him watch the door. "You can't do anything for Wilson that they are not already doing."

"I know. But as long as the only thing I can do is think, I can think here as easily as in my office or the lab."

Cuddy could see the worry he was trying to hide. To anyone else he looked as usual -- scowly and in pain. To her who knew him almost as well as Wilson did, he was a mess.

"He's developed some menages swelling." He told her.

Cuddy reached out and touched his arm. "I know."

"At this stage, that's bad."

"Yes."

House leaned against the wall and gripped his cane. White knuckled, eyes almost never looking anywhere but the ICU entrance, his facial whiskers were threatening to turn from a shadow into a beard. The shadows beneath his eyes and the extra wrinkled clothes said he had not gone home for days. House was about as close to falling apart as she'd ever seen him.

"Wilson's going to be all right."

House didn't accept the easy platitude as she knew he wouldn't. But she had nothing else to offer.

"The numbers say you're wrong."

He wanted to hope Cuddy thought, but his pessimistic nature didn't allow it. "Your patient's been here six days. She's no better."

"She's no worse."

"I want you to go home and get some sleep. Some real sleep. That's not a suggestion. You're no good to your patient or Wilson if you're too tired to think."

Without another word, House reluctantly pushed himself off the wall and limped down the hall. He moved very stiffly.

Ten hours later another crises in the ICU brought House back to the hospital. Wilson's vitals were crashing.

House made himself a nuisance and refused to leave Wilson's bedside when ordered to by the attending.

Cuddy intervened and spoke to the irritated physician, issuing two words. "House stays."

They managed to stabilize Wilson's vitals and again House took up his watch over his friend.

Cameron came on shift, not surprised to find him there or to hear about his refusal to leave. She couldn't recall a time when Wilson had suffered so much as a cold.

And here he was most likely, dying. No one had ever witnessed House in this state. Wilson seemed a staple to House's well being. The pivotal man. The pillar and support of the insane genius. They all knew it.

The only one who had not recognized the crucial place Wilson played in House's life was House.

Until now. House was riding the ragged edge of disaster. He was one intake of oxygen, one mechanical heart beat from losing his best friend. His only friend. The look of hopelessness behind his carefully controlled mask was frightening.

Cameron wanted to comfort him, but of course he would not have allowed it. She moved in and out of ICU, monitoring Wilson's O2, heart-rate and fluid levels, stepping around House without asking him to move. Changing the urinary bags, the IV's and House stayed right where he was, on a stool beside Wilson, sometimes looking at him, sometimes staring at nothing.

She brought him a coffee and he actually looked up at her gratefully. That in itself said a book about his state of mind. He was vulnerable and scared. Even two years ago, the threat of jail had not shaken loose his dismissive attitude toward his own future. But Wilson's toe-on-the-line from death had stripped House of all lassitude. He was naked of soul. Terrified.

Cameron knew from her work in Emergency and now here in ICU that in such situations, naked and fearful were norms. Here indifference was a foreign concept. There may as well have been a sign hanging above the entry that read: "This Is The Last Day of The Rest of Your Life.".

After four days of cat-napping in his office and his patient no better off, Cuddy ordered House off the case and home to his bed. She awarded Foreman temporary control of the fellowships and the patient's treatment.

Wilson's brain activity worsened a day after Cuddy had sent House home. It was usually the last stage before the brain waves flattened out and brain death was announced. Cuddy called House with the bad news. He listened impassively, said thanks and hung up.

House spent the next hour drinking half a bottle of bourbon and, for the first time in nearly ten years, weeping.

XXX

In her office, before her confusing employee, Cuddy clasped her hands. She could not make Wilson treat House's cancer. And she didn't agree with his reason why, or even understand it. But she had no choice. "I'll inform his team." She offered.

"Thanks." Wilson turned to go. "And I'll let Cameron know. She'd want to know."

XX

Cameron, for a brief few seconds, also thought it might be a joke. But Wilson's face instantly convinced her otherwise. "Oh my god." She said quietly. "What kind of cancer?"

Wilson condensed the details but told her enough that she'd recognize the seriousness of it. "I saw him a couple days ago." She said. "He was limping worse than usual, but I've seen that before, there was no reason to think-"

"I know." Wilson said and quickly added, "He'll be seeing Strong for his therapy."

Cameron reacted exactly as Cuddy had, but she was far more blunt. "Why not you?"

"I couldn't be objective."

Cameron cut to the chase, and to the bone, "House is going to _need_ you."

Wilson turned away. "I know. But I can't." The thought crossed his mind again. _If only I'd stayed in the coma._

"I can't believe this. Or you." Cameron said.

Wilson almost couldn't either. A few hours ago he was happy - getting happier - and now all he could think of doing was getting as far away from House as possible. Cameron didn't understand. Cuddy didn't. Probably no one would, and he couldn't explain why.

Neither could he tell House. He would have to lie some more. Wilson's heart ached and his mind screamed for relief.

Then he said, "I wish things were different."

That at least was the pure, unadulterated truth.

XXXXXXXXXX

To be continued...

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	2. Chapter II

FORWARDS, BACKWARDS AND SOMEHOW ELSE -- Chapter II

(Sequel to Forward in Reverse)

By: GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House, present day. An exploration of what is and what might be. Pre-slash, slash, angst, and the things that transverse time and space.

Pairing: Wilson/House

Rated: M, NC-17, Mature, Adult

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I see nothing. I hear nothing!

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Strong agreed to meet with Doctor's Wilson and Cuddy to discuss Doctor House's treatment. With the ready agreement of Wilson and the hedging compliance of Cuddy, Strong advised he would travel to Plainsborough twice a week to administer to House and would assign one of his own nursing tech's to stay for the duration, working under himself and Doctor Cuddy.

Cuddy's contribution to the effort was to advise Strong that whatever expenses House's medical insurance wouldn't cover, Plainsborough would eat.

Strong was going to be House's cancer doctor and now Wilson, feeling like a hairy heel, had to tell House he and Cuddy had hand-picked a doctor for him; decided what treatment was best, how often he would receive it, and who would do it. All done behind his back.

Wilson walked with nervous feet to House's room, heart-sick and guilt-weary. He half expected Tritter to appear and arrogantly swagger down the hallway. Those days sounded clearly in his mind like a sour-toned funeral bell.

_This is best for you, House. Simply confess to a crime you didn't actually commit and everything will be okay again. Especially for us. Just tell the District Attorney you __**intended **__to traffic your pain med's, so he can mark it down for the record (you know, you're brand new criminal record?) and you can go home. So you'll have confessed to a crime you didn't commit? We got our stuff back - what's the problem?? _

House may have been crazed with pain but he had been clear headed enough not to compromise his self-dignity which was about the only thing he'd had left.

Wilson felt the worry of those days foaming up in his gut like an ulcer_. We were pricks_. _And here we are again_ - _Fuck! No matter how much we try, nothing ever changes_. _Life is a suck-fest!_

_More so for House._ Wilson felt a trickle of sweat escape from his hair line and trail its way down his neck to stain his shirt collar. His heart pounded with what he was about to say to his best friend with the deadly cancer in his crippled leg. What to say to a man for whom all decision had again been whipped out from beneath the only sturdy foot he had left?

"Hi." Wilson said, entering House's private hospital room.

House looked up from his game-boy. "Jimmy! You wouldn't _believe_ the adventurous nurse Cuddy assigned to me. Her favorite duty is doing unspeakably marvelous things to me with a thermometer, though I can speak them if you want. If this is cancer therapy - bring it on!"

Wilson got out an "Uhm". Then pulled up the room's only visitors chair. One of those low, cushioned kind that made it difficult to see the patient once you were sitting in it. He leaned forward and sat as straight as possible, so he would be more-so eye-level with House. "Cuddy and I have...discussed your case,...the best options for your treatment,..the best physician..."

Wilson flicked his eyes away from House's sudden attentive stare, his fingers on the Game-boy freezing in place.

Wilson looked at House's fingers. Large hands. Strong, rough hands, belying the ease at which they strummed a guitar, making it sing, or coaxed beautiful melodies from a keyboard. "Strong has agreed to be your attending."

House set aside his game boy. He wiggled his fingers on the bed spread as though confronted with a puzzle. "Oh." He looked at Wilson now. "Thank you for taking the time to inform me of _my_ decision." But his sarcasm didn't last passed the one statement. "Why Strong? And you're sweating all over your ironed shirt."

Wilson wondered which parts of the cancer, or leg pain, or betrayal were already doing some of the talking. He tried picking out good, kind, soothing words from the jumble in his mind. House would believe none of it.

"If it's all the same to you..." House said, picking up a mug of coffee from the bedside table. A volunteer orderly had brought it to him earlier. House sniffed it dubiously. He took a single, heroic sip. Bitter brown water slipped down his throat. More sugar and cream would have disguised its weakness a little.

Wilson knew what House wanted, but. "I can't treat you. Ethically, I mean. I couldn't be objective."

House stared at his friend. Wilson was lying to him. Was afraid of something. He was, House saw, in personal anguish. A state House was convinced had only partly to do with his having cancer. "Oh."

Wilson knew that "oh." House was saying: _You're lying and that's interesting._ When House said nothing more Wilson breathed a silent sigh of relief. He'd expected questions, shouting and angry dismissal. Not House's quiet capitulation.

House sipped his coffee and studied the thick mug. Deciding that his stomach lining was more important than his craving for caffeine, he put it aside, leaving the remainder to turn cold. "Strong's coming here or--?"

"Yes." Wilson explained Strong's readily agreeing to treating House's cancer, his arrival time the next day and also the doctor's reputation as a cancer specialist. In truth Wilson had to cajole and practically bribe Strong into accepting House's case. House was not exactly everyone's favorite doctor, forget patient!

House listened with passive interest, then at the end of Wilson's little speech, "You're schedule must be packed."

The guilt and abandonment was tipping over, spilling onto the floor and, Wilson was certain, licking its way down the hallway For all to see. He swallowed hard. "I couldn't be object--"

"--It's my _leg_," House emphasized, "that has the cancer. Not the whole me."

"With cancer, it's one and the same."

"Right. Unlike other diseases such as AIDS, Small Pox or The Plague." House nodded facetiously. "Those, by the way, don't kill immediately either."

Wilson tried again, for no lesser reason than convincing _himself_ it was the correct decision. "But they kill, and since you're my best friend, I can't be the attending. I couldn't be objective."

"And Doctor Wilson's always objective. _Never_ lets his emotions do his thinking. I'm not dying Wilson. Not yet."

Wilson swallowed, his heart thumping with sick fear, his mind replaying images of Greg under the bus. House's face was there too now, drained of blood in a death mask. Wilson thought he might vomit. "I think this is the best option." He stood and walked to the door before his resolve buckled. Before he wept in abject sorrow. Before he threw up all over the starched sheets. "It's the only ethical choice. I'm sorry."

"Hmm." House said as Wilson reached the door.

But before he managed to slip away, Wilson turned half back around. "What?"

"Ever since you entered the room, you haven't said my name."

XX

Early afternoon a day later, Cuddy entered, smiling and handed House a strawberry frappuchino.

"Oh, you're a merciful angel." House said, accepting the beverage and licking some of the pink foam off the overflowing paper cup. "The coffee they serve from the nurses station might be useful as a radiator flush or maybe cleaning the rust off Steve's cage."

Cuddy sat, folding her hands in he lap. "I know about Wilson. He's right. Strong _is_ good."

House looked heaven-ward. "Does everyone around here tell everyone else everything? When can I get out of here? Everyone's treating me like I'm an invalid."

Cuddy knew House would understand her unstated reference. "Do you want me to talk to him?"

"No." House set his coffee on the wheeled serving table, the kind they served food on. Cuddy saw the lunch they had fed House had been eaten but for a bread crust.

"If he's too,...if he doesn't want to treat me, he doesn't have to."

Nodding to his bandaged thigh, "How's it feeling?" Cuddy asked.

House threw off the blankets. "Fine. Wilson only took a few ounces. Plenty left. I think." He sat on the edge of the bed.

"Doctor House?"

Cuddy and House turned to see Doctor Strong enter the room. He was perhaps fifty-five years old, with a head of thinning grey hair, a straight nose and a neatly trimmed salt and pepper goatee. He wore reading glasses. "I wanted to let you know I'd arrived. And thought we could discuss surgery options."

"The only option is: you're not cutting off my leg." House told him bluntly.

Strong stopped, sighed and seated himself anyway. "That is of course not the first treatment we'll try but, yes, it might become necessary in order to save your life."

"When that time comes, _if_ it comes, I'll decide _then_. I'm not giving you the go ahead of time to lop it off just because you think it _might_ be necessary."

Strong whipped off his glasses, a gesture he often used to emphasize to his patient's that they were siding with ignorance. A gesture wasted on House. "Doctor House-"

"It's _my_ leg. It's my body. It's even my tumor. If I decide to go down with all of it intact, that's my decision. I think I read that in the constitution - or somewhere. "_Give me liberty"_!"

Strong replaced his glasses and threw Cuddy a significant look that said, _Talk to your idiot! _"We'll discuss this later."

House rolled his eyes. "Can't wait for that argument. Bring popcorn."

Cuddy waited until Doctor Strong left, but she offered no argument. _Not this time_. As far as it concerned her, surgically House could have, or _not_ have, exactly what he wanted.

XXX

"Hey." House, released from his temporary cancer-theme-ed incarceration, entered his conference room and addressed his idle employees. They were seated, flipping through magazines. Kutner was studying their patients file thus far for the fifth time, hoping for inspiration. House added, "I'm pretty sure I hired you all to _work_ for me."

Kutner, Taub, Thirteen and Foreman all made a point of _not_ looking at House with sympathy.

House saw through it instantly. Fixed himself a coffee and stirred it angrily. "Cuddy told you, didn't she?" He hooked his cane over the whiteboard and with his back to them, wrote while addressing the four of them. "Now you know I have cancer. Fine. Can't be helped. Every medical lackey on the eastern seaboard will know, once Cameron finishes her e-mailing."

House took his cane and faced them, "I'm fine, in fact I'm great. All other rumors are false. So I'm going to say this once: I'd appreciate all tears or noises of sympathy be kept tucked away or you will be met with the severest of sarcastic zingers."

Cuddy entered the room.

"Why are you following me? And why aren't you on a hot date or, well,..._anywhere_ else?" House asked, not relishing so soon another conversation with his boss about his leg, his pain, his feelings or anything else personal, pink, foamy frappuchino paradise beverages or no.

"Need you." She said.

Retreating to his office, House sat at his desk and put his foot up.

Yawning, "What can I do for you this sun shiny day?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Boy, am I going to start shooting people who ask that question. But since you're still standing there -- I'm fine."

"Very pat."

"Thank you. I practiced it all morning. Are you here to again assure me everything's going to be all right?"

"No." She answered, ignoring his glibness. "I forgot to mention before that if you need time off or extra assistance-"

"Thanks but I'm _fine_. I'm going to have it stenciled on my T-shirt."

"Pat again and Strong says different."

"We caught the cancer in the early stage. I'll get the chemo', I'll be cured. Life will go on, people will still get married and divorced, the sun will rise again and you'll still be wearing tops that turn heads all over New Jersey. _Okay?? _I'm still perfectly functional._"_

"Yes, but that may change. If it does, come to me."

He smiled. "Are you going to help me remain "functional"?"

She smiled indulgently back. "I'll do whatever I can to help you do your job as long as you're able."

"I'm never going to be _UN_-able."

Cuddy nodded without agreeing. "And I told your staff because, if they're going to be working closely with you, they have a right to know."

"Sure. They all need to know the _new_ reason I'm an ass and use a cane." House heaved himself to his feet. "Now, I have a patient to save and you have time-sheets to fill out or push-up bras to purchase. Nice chat." House returned to his conference room and his whiteboard.

Cuddy watched him for a moment. At least his sarcasm was still healthy.

"Where are we?" House asked the room. "Or, more to the point, what's the status of what's-'er-name? You know, the sick chick."

"Her name is Christine Nielsen." Thirteen informed him.

House erased "infection?" from the whiteboard and answered Thirteen's under-the-table snottiness with. "Oh, right. Knowing her name makes all the difference. We'll cure her with manners." House flipped the whiteboard one-eighty and began to write on the other side. "New differential. What else could it be besides all those things I'm assuming you tested her for as I instructed but she's still here and still sick, so it couldn't be those?"

Only Foreman spoke. "This has to be some sort of cancer."

House frowned, screwing up his eyes. ""_Has to be_"? Maybe if we sweet talk it enough..." He kept his face to the whiteboard. After a few seconds of silence, "Did you all just go for coffee and donuts? I'm not hearing anything."

"What about beryllium poisoning?" Foreman suggested. "Most of the symptoms fit."

House flipped the whiteboard back around. "Good. Swelling of the joints fit, but she was negative for heavy metal toxicity."

"Unless the beryllium settled in her joints, which would mimic arthritis." Taub said.

Thirteen added. "Well, she was neagtive for for RH."

"And heavy metal toxicity." Foreman reminded them. "We checked her blood and tissue for beryllium and fifteen other HM possibilities. Nothing."

Taub gave him an "I know" look. "Unless it was delivered in gas form. Dissolve beryllium in sodium hydroxide..."

"It would enter her system via her lungs." Thirteen said.

"None in her tissue or blood." House said. "Unless,..." He thought for a second. "What if it was introduced slowly over time? No longer shows in blood panel. Lungs are clear now. We checked her tissues - now check the specific proteins. Beryllium solubility might have shunted it via her lymphatic system. Acts like a cancer, even symptoms appear like cancer, only it isn't."

_I wish._ House narrowed his eyes at the list of symptoms that for weeks had been pointing them in different directions, only to being them back to the beginning. Now the new possibility...decoy or the _real_ McCoy? "Is this a mirage or am I seeing things?"

Taub suggested, "Maybe her significant other doesn't like her anymore and sprayed some lovely beryllium gas into her favorite enclosed space, like while she was showering or watering her green house roses?"

House chewed his lip, staring at the weak list of possible's. He wrote a few more ideas of his own. He looked at Foreman. "Find out what he husband does for a living. See if he has access to heavy metals. Try and find out who he's "accessing" on the side. Don't forget to question the husband, his friends, his dog...In the meantime Thirteen and Taub'll start her on the toughest steroids going."

Alarmed, "What's that going to accomplish?" Thirteen asked. "It may ease her symptoms, but it could also cause-"

House looked around and smiled a bit when he saw Foreman quickly dawning to the idea.

"Steroids could crash any of a number of her systems." Foreman said to House while actually addressing the group. "He wants to make her worse so something will change. It's the fastest road to treatment and she's running out of time."

House put the cap back on his felt pen. "See? I knew you weren't all good looks and attitude." House nodded to the group. "Kutner, stick with the patient. Monitor her kidney function, liver, brain, check for new swelling there -- or anywhere. Keep an eye on her nervous system, adrenal system and any other system we have a test for. Whatever this thing is, we're going to pop a cap in its ass and see what hurts first."

House returned to his office and eased himself down onto his recliner, propping his leg on the ottoman, letting a held breath finally escape. He popped three Strong-approved but inferior pain-killers and massaged the painful leg.

Foreman looked at him through the glass for a moment, then followed the rest of the team out the door.

XXX

In the cafeteria line-up, Cameron paid for and regarded her lifeless lunch of tossed green salad and bran muffin with chagrin. There was only one rule to healthy eating: If it smelled, looked or tasted bad - eat it!

She seated herself two tables down from House's new collection of fellowships - cultures cooking in the lab, nothing to do but wait. Go have lunch, gossip - ah the memories...

Cameron tried to eat while trying not to think about House. House with cancer. House with infarction, with pain, with opiates coursing through his blood just to function day to day -- House shot and almost bleeding out. It wasn't fair. So he was a jerk and not into humility. So what? People admired Donald Trump, didn't they? He was royal ass too and all he suffered from was a case of exceptionally bad rug.

As she crunched unhappily on her rabbit lunch, she tried to recall the new fellowships names. The expressionless plastic surgeon guy (why in the world a plastic surgeon??) was Taub. Short names were easier to remember. The taller, friendly looking fellow was...Kutner? Kutcher? Something like that. The female was Thirteen. Not her proper name. Cameron had only met her once and couldn't recall her proper name.

She chewed, catching a word or two from their animated discussion. Sometimes there were laughs, sometimes huffs. The occasional "Oh my god!" drifted over from their table to her ears.

Anyway _House_ called her Thirteen and Thirteen _responded_ to Thirteen so Cameron figured _she'd_ call her Thirteen until such a time as Thirteen made it clear what her proper name _was_.

Thirteen was speaking, "No one does that. No one normal anyway."

_Probably talking about House. When you fellow shipped under House, other than the patient, that's pretty much all you talked about._

"What's normal?" Kutner (_Yeah, she was pretty sure it was Kutner_) asked.

Thirteen answered, ""What's normal"? _Not_ switching out the coffee with decaffeinated. _Not _sticking a knife into a wall socket and nearly killing yourself. _Not_ playing roulette with a patient's health. _Not_ putting us up to ridiculous games just to see if we would play along."

Taub reminded her, "But you did play along."

"I wanted the job." Thirteen answered testily.

_Well, you got the job. Quite bitching! _Cameron bit into the bran muffin. Sawdust with raisins_._

"House is nuts." Thirteen commented rudely.

_Careful, honey. House may be nuts but he's our nut. And I'm a bigger squirrel than you!_

"Most say he's a genius." Kutner said. Kutner was a nice kid but a bit of a brown noser. House, however, had still hired him so something about him had to be a cut above ordinary. Cameron silently laughed at herself. God, three - no - almost four years ago, _she_ had been the "kid". Water under the bridge, down Vicodin Lane and passed The House.

Incredible. She cared for the man every bit as much as she had the day she'd first laid eyes on him. Not the love-sick until her eyes bled kind of care. A better kind. The kind that was sincerely glad to call House a friend.

"Don't you remember what happened at Christmas?" Thirteen asked her co-workers.

"Sure." Kutner answered. "We gave him gifts."

"No," Thirteen corrected him. "House _made_ us give him gifts. He's pathetic."

Taub said, "House was trying to figure out which of us would try to curry favor with the best gift or which of us wouldn't or didn't give a crap. It was an experiment. He studies people."

"Or maybe he just doesn't get gifts much." Kutner theorized.

"Or he could have asked." Thirteen said, "Or he's an anti-social, deranged junkie with no moral center or regard for anyone but himself."

Cameron nearly stopped breathing. Their voices were easily carrying to her table. Lots of lunch-goers could also hear. Most knew for whom these new fellowships worked. Cameron pushed aside her bland lunch, stood and approached their table.

Cameron smiled at them. "Taub, Kutner, and...sorry-don't-remember. Almost finished lunch?"

The three had immediately shut up when Cameron had appeared. She was a former fellowship and rumor had it was once in love with House and so a stoic House-defender. Their weird boss's former ingenue. When it came to all things House, she was in-the-know.

"Yeah," Kutner did his best "Look- it's Cameron and she's House's _friend_" smile. "-we're-"

"-Good." Cameron clasped her hands politely in front of her. "Because I want to see you all in my office in ten minutes."

"_Your_ office?" Thirteen repeated.

"Yes." Cameron answered. "_My_ office. When you're put in charge of a department, you get one of those. Emergency entrance, main office behind Admitting. You're fellowships, you come to it when a doctor asks you to." She stared at each of them. "Unless you'd like to come with me to Cuddy's office?" She leaned over the table so only their ears would hear her next words, "And sum up your little lunch time chat with her."

No one dissented. Cameron had clout. That was bad. House controlled their tenure. That was worse. Cuddy could probably arrange to medically black-list all of their ass's through-out New Jersey. She was the Mount St. Helen's of awful.

xx

Cameron indeed had a small office. Not lavish, no balcony. Only one window, but _hers_. She had secured her place within Plainsborough. It wasn't quite the challenge she'd hoped for, not like working under House, but it was all her doing and therefore she loved it.

Cameron did not invite them to sit down once they entered and lined up in a puzzled little group. Cameron leaned back in her chair, folding her hands on her desk. "It's nice to see new staff members settling in. Really. I'm glad. You're getting to know each other, sharing stories, even whispering back and forth a little hospital gossip here and there."

Cameron's smile disappeared and her face turned dark. "But if I _ever_ hear any of you publically disparaging Doctor House again, I have no problem tattling to Cuddy all about it - don't test me on that, I'm a big snitch - and I'm also confident she would probably fire all of your asses."

Thirteen cleared her throat, Kutner coughed and Taub suddenly found something interesting to stare at out the window. All three blushed to the roots.

Fellowship Cameron of four years ago, shy, soft-spoken, nervous, had disappeared. Confident, learned, tested Doctor Cameron, chief of Emergency Admittance and Triage stood, walked around and perched herself on one corner of her desk, crossing her arms.

"Now, knowing the little bit about House that I do - yes he can be a jerk. Yes, you _are_ working for a sometimes loud, sometimes rude, sometimes difficult, sometimes off-the-wall man. But you're also in the privileged position of training under one of the country's best medical minds - so my advice to you is _suck it up!" _

Herpoint made, Cameron seated herself in her chair again. "Now, having said that, what your personal opinion of Doctor House is, is your business. I don't care. But in a public or professional setting you _will _treat him with respect. If you can't handle that, there's an opening in Podiatry on the second floor I'm sure Cuddy would let you draw straws for."

Cameron lowered her eyes to her paperwork. "Have a nice day."

xx

Thirteen muttered as they filed out. "She's obviously got a soft spot for addicts. I've heard her call him worse."

"She's also one of the Dean's favorites." Taub said.

"Didn't she and House used to date." Kutner asked.

Taub gently herded his two co-workers into one corner of the hallway outside Emergency. "We might not like it, but Doctor Cameron's right. House is our boss. We should watch our mouths and talk nice about him no matter how ridiculous it might sound."

XXX

When House's team filed in the next Monday, Doctor Cuddy was waiting for them in the conference room. Four sets of curious eyes fell on her as they took seats. Kutner bee-lined for the coffee maker, rinsed out the pot and proceeded to brew fresh.

Foreman came in last and not seeing House anywhere, was the first to voice what they all were wondering. "Doctor Cuddy. I know it's early but any idea where House is? We need to-"

"-I know." Cutting him off, Cuddy linked her hands together in front of her and stood very straight. She addressed the group. "Doctor House won't be in today." She looked briefly at her shoes, not elaborating the why's. It was simple. First chemo' treatment that morning. House was in, but not _in_. Her shoes were polished to a high shine.

At their questioning faces, she explained. "Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have divulged such confidential information, but these circumstances are not normal. You're his employees and what's happening could, in time and in some way affect you." She cleared her throat, struggling to remain professional. "You're already aware that Doctor House has been diagnosed with cancer." She gave them no free moment to organize a thought and respond. "I'd like to add that during his chemo-therapy, he may be absent for one or two days per week."

Who was she kidding? In the beginning maybe. Later on? House would be sick bedded for days and days. "He will continue to work as long as he feels able. When he is absent, Doctor Foreman will be in charge." Thank god she had re-hired him. As much as Foreman liked to deny it, he was in many ways another House. Cuddy found that comforting.

News of House's illness had got out and the whole hospital was already gossiping about it. Cuddy looked at each of them in turn. "And, as you also are aware, Doctor House is a very private man. I would appreciate you all remembering that." She hoped they would read between the lines of that statement and understand her implied advice: Don't talk about it. Don't talk to _House_ about it. Don't smother him. Leave him alone. Treat him as usual.

Secretly she hoped they would ignore some of that and treat him with greater respect, with kindness, with sympathy. Even if he would probably remain a disgruntled jerk.

Cuddy added, "If any of you feel you will not be able to work under Doctor House while he is ill or receiving treatment, you are free to log clinic hours or turn in your resignations. You'll get a good recommendation from this hospital." She turned to Foreman. "You'll have to cope on your own at least for today. Let me know how it's going with your case."

Foreman only nodded. "Quick update." He offered. "She's been here over a month. She's in a semi-coma. We're no where near to understanding what it is."

Cuddy wished she had something hopeful to offer or add but instead just nodded, set a stiff upper lip and left.

XXX

The next day, "How does he look to you?" Kutner leaned across the lab counter, asking Thirteen. "And where's Taub?"

Thirteen brushed a few stray brunette hairs off her face. She carefully placed a slide under the microscope. "It's been two weeks. House sounds the same, so as far as I'm concerned, he still is the same. Until that changes, why think about it? And Taub's with the patient." She looked through the eye-piece.

With her own Huntington's time bomb ticking away inside her, Kutner thought, Thirteen ought to be the poster girl for "Why think about it?" He just asked, "Well?"

Removing the slide. "Negative for Plural Sarcoidosis."

"What happens if House gets too sick to work?"

Thirteen sighed. "Then I guess we don't work, or, like Cuddy said, we do clinic hours. Or we work under Foreman." She slide another sample into the scope. "And negative for Ankylosing Spondylitis."

Kutner nodded, his mind not really on the lab work. Negative was a word they'd used often with this case. "You don't like House."

Thirteen shrugged. "Does it matter? I work for him, I'm not dating him." She glanced over at her co-worker, realizing he was expecting more. "Look, I respect him as a doctor; his skill. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the opportunity to work for him but, no, I don't much like him."

She looked at him. "Your turn."

Kutner considered for a second. "I do. Sort of. He reminds me of my dad's brother. A nut. But sharp. And...he's funny."

"That's just another defensive stance he uses to push people away." She said. "Humor, anger, insults, silence, whatever deflects personal or emotional connections. Whatever's uncomfortable, he shuts it down. He's a genius, no one disputes that. But it's like he never learned how to sympathize, or care about anyone."

"Maybe he had reason not to."

She turned her eyes back to her work. "Maybe."

XXX

"Well?" Was House's only word as they returned to his office. His leg, as it usually was these days, hurting.

Taub was already there. "She's in a full coma." Was his greeting to them.

"And negative for everything." Thirteen answered. "But she's no worse."

Kutner shifted his eyes between Taub and House. House was sitting at his desk, his leg on a pillow with a blue cooling bag resting on his thigh. When he spoke, it was obvious he was hurting. He used as few words as possible and when he did, they shot out from his mouth clipped and humorless. Pain and the idea of dying can do that to you, Kutner thought.

"Except for the part about the coma." House snipped.

House had undergone four chemo' treatments thus far and the effects were starting to show. He was off Vicodin and all pain relief except what Strong was prescribing, which was, obvious to all, insufficient. He had taken to eating his lunch in his office instead of dragging his diseased leg down to the cafeteria. In fact, other than to carry the leg - now using crutches - to the bathroom nearest his office, he didn't much move from his chair all day.

And, most notable of all, for said weeks Wilson was hardly to be seen. Everyone, and everyone included the entire hospital wing staff, knew something was amiss in House-Wilson land. The warped but enduring friendship appeared to be at, if not an end, a stalemate.

Speculation as to why raged. Wilson, oncologist and stoned-or-drunk-House-rescue-cleaner-upper, was _not_ treating House's cancer and that wasn't even the oddest part of the weirdness. Wilson was also not being the supportive-buddy/surrogate-wifey-of-Housie, and that was simply _unheard_ of in this dimension. Chin's wagged all over. It was the most curious gossip to circulate since Wilson stepped in front of a bus and everyone already knew that story upside-down and inside-out.

Especially the House end of the story. The Wilson part was boring (how interesting can a guy in a coma be?). House had not left Wilson's side during Wilson's coma. House had hunched in that chair looking like a whiskered gnome. Silent, tapping his cane on the floor, snapping at anyone who violated his little corner of misery. House had become the pathetic, angry sentinel. People had actually sneaked peeks at the never-before sight of House caring for someone that much.

_Wow! Queer role reversal. _People said. _Take a picture. _Others quipped_._

"What else?" House barked.

Taub and Thirteen looked drawn. All of them had bags under their eyes and hadn't been to their respective homes for thirty-six hours. Kutner felt his brain shrinking like a wet dish sponge left out in the sun.

House looked at them in turn and tossed their newest results in his trash. "Go home." He said. Not angry. Tired brains were useless.

Kutner and Taub made good their escape.

Thirteen stayed behind for a few minutes to clean up a few files and gather her notes. Her back ached from sitting on that lab stool for hours, looking at one disappointing slide after another. Mystery woman with mystery disease. This one might not give up her secrets.

House struggled to his feet and just made it to his desk chair when his late dinner, (Ensure, roast beef sandwich and vegetable "medley") came spewing back up.

He sat back, coughing up the last little bits of masticated food into his trash basket. His aim pretty good, most of it had been contained. The rest...the cleaning staff would have a small surprise waiting for them. Not, he was certain, the last.

He sat back and breathed deeply, attempting to dispel the flapping nausea in his outraged stomach. An ultimately fruitless venture. He was, in truth, feeling much worse since the puking. Bathroom trip in order, House stood to walk to his office door but made it only a few feet before he was overcome, not by another intense desire to empty his innards all over his office carpet, but by a breathlessness.

It started very subtly but within seconds had him gasping for air. House slowly settled himself on the worn carpet next to his desk. Something to lean against while he sorted through this newest, and weirdest, symptom among all the melody of symptoms his cancer and its treatment had rapidly introduced into his life. House wasn't panicked and he wasn't hyperventilating, he was _hypo_-ventilating.

His brain, he knew, was telling his lungs to take very shallow breaths but hurry up about it! He found if he stayed very still and just concentrated on getting enough air into his lungs, he was okay. Not enough air to make his muscles work well enough to stand or even lift his arm and reach the phone on his desk behind him, but enough to not faint. Physical immobilization by breathing - now _there_ was an interesting symptom. House diagnosed it instantly.

Since his cancer med's had not changed, something else had and he thought he knew what. Strong had put him on something for his chemically induced depression. Some anti-depressants caused respiratory distress in a small percentage of people. To his irritation, he himself turned out to be one of those few. House hoped the distress would not lead to respiratory failure and the extra special annoyance of _dying_.

As Thirteen shrugged into her coat and searched the pockets for her keys, she could see House out of the corner of her eye popping pills. What he was on she didn't know and wouldn't ask. She felt sympathy for him - she knew what it was like to face _possible_ death - but House's life or death was none of her business.

She heard retching and saw him throw up into his own trash basket. Thirteen watched for a few seconds to ensure he was actually okay enough for her to leave for the night. House was a grown-up. He could hold what was left of his own hair.

House stood and started walking to his office door. _Bathroom, _she figured. _Wash his mouth out; get a cold drink to settle the nausea_.

House had, like most of them, recently traded his leather jacket for a warmer, fall coat. Late September was still riding weather, but formula of cancer-in-leg plus cold wind plus bumps minus Vicodin equaled motorbike ride impossible. House had taken to driving himself to work.

House stood. But instead of taking crutches in hand and leaving, he was stood perfectly still, one hand reaching out as though to clutch at said winter coat hanging on the coat rack. Instead of completing that simple task, he changed his mind and slowly backed up toward his desk.

Thirteen for a few seconds didn't note it in particular. Even when in her peripheral vision House appeared to be shrinking, getting shorter, she still didn't really look as her brain took its time sorting through the possible explanations for the out-of-the-norm motions.

Then, when her mind came back to her, it told her the movement in House's office - his movement - wasn't just abnormal, it was _wrong_. Something was very bad about it in fact, and only then did she turn her head to finally get a proper look.

House was sitting on the floor by his desk, legs splayed out, his face drawn and tight. He appeared to be gasping for air. Thirteen was at his side in seconds - "Doctor House!"

When he was unable to catch enough air to respond, Thirteen reached for his desk phone to call a Code. House shook his head "no". Finally he managed to squeeze out a few words between quick shallow breaths. Thirteen was reminded of a land-caught fish, gasping for life, it's gills working desperately, the fleshly flaps, not designed to work out of water, unable to extract the needed oxygen from the raw, sharp air passing over it's folds.

"It's just-" Breath, breath, breath,... "-drug...inter-" - Gasp! - "-action,...it,...'ll pass."

At her skeptical look, House nodded, raising his right arm and trying vainly to work the drawer pull on his desk's top drawer. Thirteen understood and opened it, fumbling around, checking the labels on his many medications. She quickly read the various names: Mitoxantrone (anti-cancer drug), Mitomycin (ditto), Multi-vitamin (still un-opened), Vicodin (opened but full), Promethazine Hydrochloride (anti-nausea, anti-dizziness - not doing it's job obviously).

Thirteen found the suspected culprit: Venlafaxine (anti-depressant sometimes known to cause respiratory distress in a small percentage of patients). Thirteen went through a partial list in her head: other side effects include cardiac arrhythmia, panic attacks and nervousness, all which could cause House to end up on the floor fighting for air. Thirteen checked the pulse at his throat. Fast but not arrhythmic. But she wasn't convinced this respiratory dysfunction was about to pass away like a good little attack and called a Code anyway.

House glowered.

In moments a crash cart had arrived crowded by pink and blue legs of varying shape. All House knew next of his world was a kaleidoscope of frowning faces jabbering to each other and fingers man-handling his arms and chest, ripping open his shirt (sending buttons popping and flying away like tiddly winks) pushing things into his veins, wrapping things around his arm, pressing cold things up against his chest and strapping things to his face. House vainly tried to push away all those hands. _They were not going to roll him down the hallway to emergency like an ,..old...__**dying**__ guy! _His weak attempt to gain freedom was ignored_._

Three sets of powerful arms, not caring about his wants, were lifting him like he was weightless, laying him out on the Gurney and rushing him away in a speed that left him light headed.

When Cuddy got news of House's trip to emergency, she had him admitted to the cancer ward for his next chemo-therapy treatment. "You'll stay here until the treatment and the side effects are manageable." Cuddy held up a hand to stop any argument. House had hunkered down in the hard mattress, clearly unhappy with the restrictions to his freedom. "That means twice a week House, for at least two days each therapy session."

"What about my patient?"

"Consultations can happen here. You handled that when you were in Rehab."

"Yeah. And we all know how well that went."

"He lived." Cuddy reminded him. And her expression softened. "I'd appreciate that from you as well."

House sighed. His leg was killing him. Maybe it wasn't a bad idea to slide for a while. He might be able to con Strong into some morphine. Or sweet talk Cuddy for same. "Um,.." He started.

"-No morphine." Cuddy said quickly, anticipating his request. Then, not without apology, "You know it can interfere with the cancer drugs. Strong's right."

"But only when he's not wrong. " House said bitterly.

_Bitter because_ _it was Strong_. "Don't exaggerate." She said.

"You only think he's right because you only see him occasionally. I see the guy every other day. He's wrong so often, after a while you don't notice it anymore."

It wasn't true and House knew it, so Cuddy let him release his venom onto Strong. Insults wouldn't harm the guy when he wasn't around. She understood House _said _them because Wilson wasn't.

XXX

Into the third week of his chemo', House wasn't prepared for the nausea that arrived like a battalion in battle gear.

His stomach did not simply become queasy, it tossed and churned like a broiling sea bringing up all manner of putridity from the deepest depths of his gut, rising to overflow at the back of his throat. Then is settled into a simmer that saturated flesh half way down his legs, seeped into his shoulders. Even his nostril cavities felt sick.

His saliva tasted like metal on fire - the flavor of burnt tungsten, if tungsten had a flavor. His body protested the chemical horde with violent attempts to expel the offending substances. Deep source spasms rocked and twisted his insides again and again, twisting him over the side of the bed to spew up greenish sputum into the shiny basin placed strategically on the floor.

Cameron entered his room once or twice during this worst course of his day, to cool his forehead with a wrung cloth, a gesture he was far too ill to acknowledge, no matter his appreciation.

House, slack against the sweat soaked sheets, watched Cameron move around the room, following her with half closed but, he hoped, grateful looking eyes. Weakness prevented anything more.

She stood by his bed. House was shades of grey and white, his breathing labored from the continual involuntary bouts of vomiting. Cameron suddenly remembered her first day in his employ. Her first impression had been: arrogant, sexist ass!

Through the three years she had worked for him, a gradual, almost imperceptible change had occurred. His clipped arrogance had gradually transmuted to opinionated humor. His sexism had not ever really been that at all. She came to understand that House called things as he saw them. A woman using her wiles to gain professional ground was a professional whore. "Just because she gets paid in position or clout..." House had remarked.

"And a guy who sleeps with said professional whore?" She had asked.

"Not labeling him other than a guy doing what guys do. Biologically, all men are sexual pigs. They'll roll with anything."

House had mellowed in some ways. Good ways, she thought. He had become gentler in manner, not so afraid of people and their perpetual need for closeness. He had even begun to display a measure of vulnerability. House had even said he was sorry a few times when there was no _real _need to.

Cameron wiped his forehead again and was glad he had fallen asleep. Her old feelings were still there, deeper, less urgent, un-needful. Two ill-suited people, she thought, but suited as friends quite well. She loved him, yes. But it was a better sort of feeling as it now was. Left inside, unfulfilled. She didn't mind.

House had never, not once, tried to avoid her despite her declaration of feelings those few years ago. He hadn't even treated her differently afterward, as so many would have. Another might have tried to transfer her somewhere else to make the situation more comfortable for themselves. But not House. She found that interesting.

Her mind left the past for the puzzling present. The Wilson thing that was going on. House wasn't happy about Strong, yet insisted Wilson be left alone. That, too, was interesting. After all these years and so much weird water under the bridge, House still had the ability to surprise her. It was one reason she never stopped caring.

When next Cameron checked on him, he was awake and alert, though still in pain.

She walked to the bed, her face a mixture of sympathy and affected good cheer.

"If you're here to wash my feet with your tears," House said, "I'm allergic."

Cameron threw him doubting eyes. "You're allergic to tears?"

"No. Maudlin sympathy."

She sat in the padded chair beside his bed. House picked up a small device with an attached cord that disappeared beneath the bed. "Electric." He said to her. "Push this, bed goes up. What a fascinating and wonderful world." At the higher level, he could see her face.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

Yep. Here it comes. "Like a crippled doctor with cancer in his leg. Crappy. But don't worry, it's nothing that a _lack_ of crappy wouldn't fix.""

She peered closer. "Your eyes are red." Cameron reeked of concern.

"All the better to see you." He quoted waving away her concern with an explanation that sounded so plausible it was probably a lie -- "Not much sleep last night." Then, to lead the conversation anywhere but back to him, "How's the ER and all its MVA's, GSW's, ASA's, DOA's and T-D-Um's?

Cameron smiled. "I've got two veteran nurses, three RNA's just cutting their teeth and one terrified little intern." Her smiled widened. "But at least I can work on my "non-existent" leadership skills."

House smiled back, just a little. _Yes, he had said that, hadn't he_? House decided to do those rarest of things he didn't hardly ever do: keep the conversation going by adding his a bit of own gossip. "Team's working out. Hired the right ones. Kutner's a brown noser but innovative. I mean it. He's discovered seven new ways of getting it brown."

Cameron rested her chin in her hand and settled in. This, besides the medicine, was what she missed most about working with House; the humorous parley.

House continued, "Taub's smart and not afraid to dispute if he thinks I'm wrong."

"And Thirteen?" Cameron asked. She admitted to a slightly jealous curiosity of House's pretty female fellowship.

House considered for a moment. "She's good. And smart. She hates me - which _is_ smart. Plus she knows I don't care. And she doesn't care that I don't care, so it's ..magic."

"That's...weird."

"Weird works for me."

Cameron felt an answering nostalgia and a tiny surge of her old feelings for House creeping back. "She's beautiful. You have a thing for pretty employees."

"Right. I hired Foreman solely for his dreamy eyes and tight, manly breasts."

Cameron narrowed her eyes, thinking. "And I'm pretty sure you have a _kind_ of thing for Wilson."

"That's...disturbing. How about we keep that our little secret?"

"Wilson is your Achilles heel."

"_Cuddy's_ my Achilles heel. Wilson's the puppeteer." House remarked as he watched Cameron pull a sterile glove from her pocket. He frowned. "What are you doing? Don't you have some Chase-hair to ruffle or an ER baby to cry over?"

"I'm here to change your urine bag, check your vitals, make chit-chat and,.."She snapped the second glove in place,...change your catheter."

He shifted uncomfortably, trying not to look alarmed. "Did you win a bet?"

"More like lost. I volunteered actually. Your regular nurse had to go home for a couple of hours. Teenage daughter crises."

"Are there any other kind?"

Cameron snapped on the gloves and lifted up his hospital gown just enough that she could go to work.

House watched her, a mix of embarrassment and intrigue on his tired face. "I find this evil, devious and totally hot!" He said to hide his discomfort with his former love-sick employee who was about to handle his penis. "Though it also makes me nervous. But, just so you know -- if we had ever had a second date, this is just the kind of fun I would have picked."

Cameron saw him wince as she gently removed the cath' and gave him an antiseptic wash.

He shivered. "You're hands are ice-cold."

"Warm hands might have given you ideas." She gently began to insert the new catheter and he sucked in a breath.

"Where's your spirit of adventure?" But his face was tense.

Cameron finished and smoothed out his gown. House relaxed again, settling back into his pillows. Cameron knew his second chemo of the week had just been completed a few hours earlier and though he wasn't nauseous at the moment, that would return as it always did. House was closing on four weeks into his cancer treatments and soon would arrive the weakness, the weight loss, the fatigue. Suddenly she was angry. After all he had gone through, this...

She buried the useless emotion and gave him a sad, tight smile. "I miss working with you, House." She walked to the door before any other emotions emerged that she might not be able to control and he would not want to witness. "I'll see you tomorrow."

House lowered his bed back down. He could feel the foreign chemicals coursing through his circulatory system. Could sense their destructive natures as they washed into his tissues and cells, going to work on the rapidly dividing cancer cells, and some of his rapidly dividing but non-cancerous normal cells.

How much did good wigs run these days?

XXX

Four weeks.

He had not spoken to House for that long. Wilson knew people were talking, gossiping, wondering, giving him looks as he walked down the hallways of Plainsborough that felt narrower than before. Before his coma. The ceiling lights felt sharper, harsher, invading and bringing to light every nuance in his face, exposing them naked and clear for all to see.

Wilson stepped into his front hallway, tossing his coat carelessly in the hand carved chair. Dumped his keys into a porcelain bowl sitting on a shiny wood table. Matched the chair.

Wilson was happy when the end of each work day arrived and he could escape home. He had been unable to swallow the stone that had settled in the pit of his stomach or quell the involuntary shaking in his hands.

House had cancer. Cancer had House. Either way he thought of it made him want to vomit or cry. Die.

For the time being, he settled on several drinks of expensive scotch and a mindless television show on vacationing through the Netherlands. The pretty brunette extolled the pleasantries of Holland country life.

All Wilson could see was pictures of Greg House, slowly being consumed from the inside-out by his own mutating cells. House getting thinner, weaker, more wrinkled and more blank of face as the neoplasm grew and spread, invading his muscles, bones, organs. Raging through his body like a swarm of angry army ants, eating everything in their path until killing their host; eating their life-preserver, unknowingly and thus unconcerned within the hive mind. The survival of its progeny, was secondary to the machine-like destruction of it's fragile world.

The cancer would take House as it's hostage and ask nothing but to slowly and painfully bring him to an end.

Scene's of green hillsides, wind-mills and gazing sheep blended with grave-yards and hearse's. Fluffy sheep mutated into tumors that grew and pushed aside the healthy flesh in House's body. Wilson's vision watered, diffusing the light of the late afternoon sun. The air in his condo was stale, the blood in his veins cold. His very own disease, his specialty, had taken over his life. It loomed like a revolting corpse hanging from the rafters, coming to life, turning to him, laughing hysterically as he recoiled in fear and disgust-

-Wilson woke up. His living room was dark. He had fallen asleep on his couch. The bottle of scotch was empty. He picked up the glass and bottle and carried them to the kitchen. Simple make-work actions that asked nothing but to incite movement and motion. The space of time and air between the moment and the next unwanted hour had to be filled somehow. His brain given something to think about other than the knowledge that the man he loved beyond all others was going to die for a second time, and he, Wilson, was too much of a coward to watch.

At the sink, Wilson placed the glass under the tap and rinsed it, his hands shaking so badly he could hardly hold the it or manage the tap. But neglect such action and the liquor's water-base would evaporate, leaving behind it's base sugars. A more difficult clean-up.

Wilson found his legs could not hold him and he sank to the floor, back against the cupboard. He was a fountain, a water-fall, his body liquid, his muscles mush, his strength leached out in the tears that fell and the strangled sounds forcing their way from his lips.

"I can't.." He said to the empty room.

Crying and gasping in his shame and fear, sucking air, he explained his decision to the shiny kettle, the tea towel hanging on its hook and the still kitchen air. It smelled of lemon cleanser.

"I,..I'm too close. I love him so,...so,...no, I can't see,...that...him...it's not...poss...fair -- it's _**unfair**_! I hate this. I hate all of this...House,...fuck,...fuckfuck you goddamn Life, God, Tormenter. F-fucking Bitch! You m-murderous _cunt!" _The terror of what was happening to House took his breath and he could say no more. House with cancer was intolerable.

Wilson resigned himself to the cool expanse of his floor and wondered if he was having a nervous break down. That he'd had to wake up from a coma to achieve that state was an irony so comic and so completely in tune with what had been plaguing his life, that he laughed aloud. He was certain the cancer, settled into its cozy nest in and around the damaged, raw end of House's femoral nerve, just above the wasted leftovers of his vastus latoralis, was sharing in the humor of it.

Wilson decided that he hated Fate, despised Karma, loathed Luck and her entire repertoire of torture and pain that she delighted to inflict on her hapless children. He wept uselessly until he was empty. Then pulled himself to his feet, changed into sleep-wear, crawled under the covers, and passed into the inert sleep of the vanquished.

XXXX

To be continued in Chapter III


	3. Chapter III

FORWARDS, BACKWARDS AND SOMEHOW ELSE -- Chapter III

(Sequel to Forward in Reverse)

By: GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House, present day. An exploration of what is and what might be. Pre-slash, slash, angst, and the things that transverse time and space.

Pairing: Wilson/House

Rated: M, NC-17, Mature, Adult

Disclaimer: I'd like House. I'd much likey! But I hear he lives in Princeton. He sexy. Me sad.

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"How can I help you today, Doctor Wilson?"

_How the fuck should I know? You're the psychiatrist. _Wilson wanted to snarl. He felt ready to snap. Never-the-less, in his trademark fashion, said, "I'm not sure. I was hoping..." Polite to the end. _Or __**my**__ end_.

"You wrote on the questionnaire that you recently recovered from a traffic accident and a coma." The head doctor flipped a page and adjusted his glasses. They, along with his salt and pepper pony tail, and haphazardly trimmed beard made him look very much like an old country hippie. Wilson imagined, instead of a pen and note pad, a battered guitar slung around his neck and a piece of yellow straw stuck between two front teeth. 'Willie' asked, "And that you're feeling depressed and anxious. Not sleeping..."

Wilson nodded. "Yes."

"And what do you think might be the reason for this?"

Wilson knew the routine. Psychology was a standard part of any medical schools curriculum. You read the required all the crap-babble books whether you wanted to or not, you answered all the questions whether you believed them or not, and wrote a paper or two, telling the professors what they wanted to hear. Wilson was shit-hot on telling people what they wanted to hear. It had served him well, for a while, through three marriages. He had aced Psych 101.

Despite his distaste for opening up to anyone about how he really thought and felt - really - here he was sitting across from a psychiatrist about to regurgitate every shitty thing that had occurred to him over the last few years. He couldn't help letting a small chuckle escape. He hoped Mahn had a big stack of yellow note pads.

Mahn did not react to the inappropriate laugh. No doubt he'd heard all sorts of laughs in his career. How many cackles of the truly insane had echoed here, Wilson wondered. "I, I'm,...my friend is dying of cancer. _Might_ be dying of cancer." He offered. Best place to start he supposed. Worst fucking thing he'd ever done - abandoning his best friend when he needed him the most - so probably best place to start digging through the screwed up layers of why.

"You don't know for sure?" Mahn asked and Wilson thought, _Yeah I'm the oncologist, I ought to fucking know. If I'd hung around to check up on his progress. Only I haven't. _ "He's getting treatment. There's a small chance he might rally through it. He might be okay. Eventually."

Mahn nodded in that way all psychiatrists did, complete and utter comprehension. It was written all over his grey goatee-ed face and proclaimed from his many mute degrees hung on the rose colored walls. Mahn had come recommended. Wilson had faltered only slightly at the massive numbers he'd had to drain from his bank accounts to get in the door. _At these prices, Doc' ought to be able to fix me with a magic wave of his pen. _

"This friend is...?"

"Gregory House."

"Heard of him."

Wilson nodded, acknowledging their medical community based shared understanding of: Who hasn't? "He's my best friend. For years, he's..." At a loss for words as usual. Very hard to tie House down to a single descriptive sentence. Damn near impossible actually. "House is...important to me."

"Is he why you're here?" Mahn was no idiot.

Wilson swallowed hard. His chest was caving in under bricks of guilt and fear. "I'm avoiding him because I don't want to watch him die."

Mahn raised one thoughtful eyebrow. Oncologist best friend avoids cancer-stricken best friend (who might live) because he doesn't want to watch him die. Wilson could see the words all but disappear down Mahn's gullet as he chewed over them. He scribbled on his yellow pad. "Interesting" the eyebrow said.

XXX

House picked up his pen that he had tossed on the bed covers. Yesterday had been treatment one of week seven of chemo' therapy. Stone, the hospital psychologist had been around this morning (the day of Cuddy's enforced bed-rest incarceration until the risk of his landing a puke bomb in one of her shiny hallways was diminished), and done her duty which was to suggest he keep a journal of his experiences.

"Might have been good to suggest that when the treatment actually started." House had replied. "You're six weeks late."

Stone sited shortness of staff and time as reasons for her tardiness.

House thoroughly rejected the idea. "What point is there is keeping a journal when I already know what I'm thinking and feeling. No one else is going to read it and I don't need to read it to remind myself of what I just felt or thought. Nor will I ever peek at it when I'm in a nursing home to remind me of the good old days of how many times I vomited up my food or the color of my bowel movements. Good times and all as that sounds."

He listened to her counsel with a bored corner of his brain while the rest of his mind wandered back to the program on his television. _How come Sponge-Bob isn't water-logged? And how did an ocean sponge manage to be born a perfect rectangle? And why does he wear pants anyway? Sponges have no sex organs to be modest over. Or do they? _ He'd have to look that one up.

"..plus it might help you come to terms with..." Stone was saying.

"...your feelings about having cancer." House echoed for her the standard stuff he'd heard for years. "Yeah, yeah. Leave the damn note-pad. Bob and Sandy are about to bungee cord off a Humpback. Can't you see I'm busy?"

With a look of profound relief, Stone left.

When day time television no longer offered anything worth getting into a comfortable stupor over, House picked up the pen again. May as well do it if for nothing else than he was bored.

He wrote:

_"I'm supposed to keep this journal while sick with cancer and even sicker with the cancer-__**treatment**__. Stone is an idiot. My oncologist Strong (both names start with S's -- Weird!) wants me to add radiation into the mix because the eight centimeter tumor in my leg isn't "responding" to the chemo' med's as he hoped. Radiation will make very little difference at this stage. Wilson could have told him that - if Wilson was around. Which he isn't and I'm not going to write anything about that. Strong is an idiot."_

House thrust the pen aside and closed the journal's hard cover with a whomp. He felt a bit better having stated in print that his doctors were morons. Maybe the journal thing won't be so bad after all. After a moment of thought, he picked up the pad again.

_"I miss Wilson. He's an idiot too!"_

XXX

The session with Mahn had resulted in no useful solution to his dilemma of conscience. Go tell House he loved him then watch him suffer and die. Or stay away and chance it that House might live to hate him for the rest of his life. Wilson scrubbed at the pan like a farmers wife on a washboard trying to get the cow stains from her husbands over-all's. He knew he was acting selfishly. He knew he was hurting House. He also knew he was walking the sharpened edge of a total breakdown.

Mahn had suggested a second visit and maybe a third. Wilson huffed to the deaf back splash over the sink. You can't cure someone of profound grief and terror in an hour. That takes two or three at least.

He would go and try to scoop out all the fucked up shit from his heart and mind onto Mahn's black cherry wood desk and maybe the psychiatrist could put it together in a way that made sense. So he could go back to being reliable, sweet Wilson who faked smiles everywhere and stop being the honestly miserable bastard who only wanted his un-enlightened lover to live.

Wilson wiped the sweat from his forehead and scrubbed furiously at the greasy slime on the bottom of the pan. Meatloaf - his father's recipe, delicious. He had made enough for two. Half was wedged into a sealed plastic bin getting chilly in his Maytag. He'd eaten the other at his kitchen table, gulping down most of a quart container of apple juice as an after-wash.

House liked his dad's meatloaf. House liked almost everything Wilson cooked. Never a thank-you but he'd clean the plate. Steal food from him in fact. And if it was home cooked, House'd abscond with the whole thing if he thought he could get away with it.

"He's a child." That was Cuddy's summation of House's attitude toward almost everything.

Except a case. Full grown up genius brain hunkered down until he fixed whatever the problem was. House would _act_ childish but he'd _think_ genius. _The two might be related. _

Wilson carried his plate to the sink, rinsed it and placed it in the dishwasher rack. The apple juice carton he put back in the fridge. boring activities to occupy his hands while his mind tried to sort out the_ thing. _The thing about House and him.

Wilson felt like a cat with his claws caught up in a ball of yarn. Struggle to extract one and two more become entangled. That was the _thing_ with House. House being the yarn, and he, the stupid cat.

It was fun, though. Sometimes. Friendship with House was a ride. Some-when about fifteen years previous the serious, study hard, do-right James Wilson had met his polar opposite and been released from a future stretching endlessly before him crowded with tedium.

House could also be a hair-ripping, teeth grinding one hundred eight-two pounds of furious frustration and grief. But Wilson kept coming back to it week after week.

Only rarely, very rarely, had Wilson been granted a glimpse of the softer House beneath the jagged exterior. Almost nothing teetered House off his deeply rooted isolation from humanity but when House did fall for something, or someone, he toppled like a old growth pine. _Greg had fallen. _Wilson still felt a sharp emptiness when he thought of him. If Greg, who had not been real, could do that to him by "dying", what was he in for if House died? Wilson asked then felt ashamed by the selfishness of the question.

Wilson cried a little as he dried and put away the few pots. He'd been doing that a lot lately. Fill up the empty hours by cleaning the big stuff by hand rather than placing them in the dishwasher, and crying when he thought of either Greg or House when no one was around to see.

Wilson's soul was crowded with both men. If it wasn't so fucking painful he would pleasure in the warmth it caused. House had warmth in him. Wilson had seen it. Rarely, briefly, like a flicker of flame on a dark night. It would be there and just when you turned your head to get a good look, it would blink out.

_"Everybody lies, except __**politicians**__?? House -- I believe you're a romantic. You didn't just believe him, you believed __**in**__ him." _House had blushed, screwed up his face and dismissed Wilson's taunt. But Wilson had felt a tiny flutter of joy at his discovery: House had a hopeful, romantic side. The man openly rejected as foolish all things sentimental but, Wilson was certain, privately harbored them just like everyone else.

So, House was human. Sort of. A little. He had emotions: anger, sadness, joy, love..._enough to keep me interested? Enough to grow into...? _Wilson shook his head, trying to sort it out_. _That just _didn't_ explain it at all. Nothing in those musings hit the mark.

Just what in his own life had transpired - what event had nudged House from the status of friendship to more-than? And the nudge had happened pre-coma. A long time pre-. When had occurred the demarcation where chit-chat and Tai' food night had expanded to include love, affection and desire?

Wilson searched back through the past for that precise moment, through the ten-thousand moments, the years of hours of his orbit around House. All the words, deeds, fun and foul, happy and harmed were looked at, but Wilson could find no singular moment. No one corner turned and no single line crossed raised it's voice and said "This is it. Over here - I'm the moment, I'm the signal you saw and now stand under, silent and foolish."

His caring for House had morphed to attraction and a fierce protectiveness even he sometimes didn't know what to do with. He'd almost gone to jail for House. He would have, too. He would have. It had felt perfectly logical and natural for him to have wanted to do that.

The satisfaction he'd derived from that had been inexplicable. Nothing even remotely like it had he felt with his three wives. House consumed most of his daylight hours and not a few erotic nights.

_**"Why??"**_ Wilson asked the question and the answer stayed away.

XXX

House seated himself, somewhat shakily, in his office chair. "Patient?" He asked his staff, though he fully expected her to be dead. Oh well, he supposed he couldn't be blamed when he was fighting for life himself. And his three new team members had obviously proved no use to her.

"As stable as it's possible for her to be under the circumstances." Taub said and handed him the patient's ever thickening file.

House pursued the contents briefly. "What about the beryllium test?"

"Not beryllium poisoning." Thirteen answered.

"Sure?" House asked but accepted her nod of confirmation. He sighed. What the hell was wrong with this woman? She had been under his care nearly two months. She wasn't even on regular ward anymore. Cuddy had shifted her to long term care. He cursed the cancer med's that made him woozy and nauseous. _Shit's probably popping brain cells as I sit here._

His team waited expectant and a little embarrassed that they had to. None of them had come up with anything new since yesterday. Foreman was busy calling around the country to see if anyone else had any ideas. And House...their eyes looking everywhere but at him said the rest -- Gregory House was drawing a blank.

House closed the file. He knew his ability to do his job was only going to get worse. He was feeling the effects of the chemo' more and more with each treatment and feared he was losing his edge. House ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. This morning in the mirror he saw red splotches on his chin and felt tiny bumps in his mouth. Some had grown larger through the day and were sore. Reaction he decided. Allergic. Autoimmune.

Strong hadn't even warned him of the possible side effects. Not specifically. Idiot.

Pain from the cancer. Pain from the goddamn med's. It was becoming difficult to talk without discomfort.Everything was getting harder. Sleeping was hard without his Vicodin. Getting up was difficult because he slept so badly he was sore and groggy all the time. And weak. Eating left him gagging. He was experiencing photo-phobia and his skin tingled. Even pissing hurt! The chemicals designed to fight the cancerous cells played havoc with his liver and kidneys. His urine was thicker and sometimes he had to bear down to evacuate.

"What's next?" Thirteen asked.

House stared at her for a moment, for once at a loss for direction. "I have no idea." He was falling apart and soon would be useless to not only his team, but himself.

His patient was going to die for sure.

XXX

House watched Strong's hands as he checked certain facts from his chart. "The chemo'," Strong said with trembling fingers, "has shrunk the tumor, but not as far as we'd hoped. That's too bad."

House waited. Strong was in slow mo' today. "Yeah, too bad. Do the resection."

"There are risks."

"Not as many now that the tumor's smaller. Less tumor, less blood infiltration, less risk of metastasis."

"I can schedule you in Friday afternoon..."

As Strong turned over the possibilities of arrangements, House already knew what it was _he_ wanted. "You're not doing the cutting."

Strong stopped. "I'm a top notch qualified surgeon-"

"But you're a two whiskey breakfast, three Martini lunch man. You're not touching me."

Strong slapped the file closed. "If you prefer another physician, Doctor House, be my guest and try to round one up, or bribe one. I do not drink!"

"Your shaking hands say otherwise, and even if it isn't drink, they're still shaking. So it's Parkinson's, Diabetes or old age. Whatever the case, you're not coming near me with a scalpel."

Strong tossed House's chart on his lap. "Fine. Our association is done." He stood. "Lots of luck finding anyone who'll put up with you."

House watched him go, glad it would be that last time he'd have to deal with the man. Chemo' treatment was one thing, a scalpel in the hands of a trembler, that was another.

House wrote in his journal: _"In the mirror today I looked like a scarecrow. I am my own Halloween costume. Fired Strong. Wilson's still MIA." _

Then he threw off the covers. Feeling shitty but better than he had that morning, he sensed he had energy enough to take a short trip. His last chemo' treatment was two days away and he was free from Cuddy's hawk-like scrutiny for a while. Quickly dressing, House went in search of another doctor who might agree to performing the operation. He went in search of a stranger.

XXX

Wilson opened the door to see the last person he expected standing on his entry-step. Realizing he was staring like an idiot, he stepped back to let House enter.

"Hey." Wilson put his hands on his hips. Not out of frustration, but because suddenly they were sweaty and nervous and he didn't know what the hell to do with them.

House looked at him evenly, without accusation. "Hey."

Wilson found it hard to look at his friend. House had changed and all for the worse. Eight or nine weeks of chemo' will do that. Though somehow, through the pigmented skin, the thinning hair, and the hollowed cheeks, the same eyes peered out, bursting with blue light and life. Wilson was glad - so terribly glad - for that.

"I need your help." House said.

Wilson swallowed air. Tried to relax shoulders rounded with tension almost to the level of his ears. How to answer? "Um, okay..." seemed easiest.

House took that as a yes. "Strong's an idiot and a drunk. I don't want him cutting me. Will you do it?"

Wilson felt a choking horror. The chemo hadn't worked then. He managed a soft, "You mean..?"

House nodded. "Tumor shrunk about sixty-five percent. That makes resection less risky. Less chance of metastasis. I need a good oncologist surgeon."

Wilson felt the earth wobble beneath him, then realized it was his own weak knees. "House-"

House tapped his cane on his marble tiles once, hard. "Just do this for me, and I won't ever ask anything from you again. I'll keep out of your life. Or at least out of your office and lunch."

Wilson smiled. House's gentle joke eased the thick tension just a little. "Of course I don't want you out of my life."

House shrugged, staring at the gleaming white floor. "Then, after the operation's over and I'm _fine_, maybe you'll tell me what it is you do want. Maybe you'll stop acting so,.so..._Wilson_."

Wilson nodded, "Maybe." House had already forgiven him, but still he felt the hot burn of shame. He felt like a poison, and healing words had to be spoken before House went away. Before he lost him even more to the cancer or because of his own frozen will. A tiny line of strained words leaked out from his lips. It was a faint whisper; a balm between them. "I want you to live."

A few simple words that filled the foyer from floor to ceiling. Magnified all the more for their quiet delivery.

Wilson hoped House could see the supplication in the words, feel their loving plea settle down over them like warm mist. House looked up at him, then to the door. "I know. I will. Schedule an O.R.?"

Wilson nodded. "As soon as possible."

House opened the door to leave. "Thanks. Early next week if you can. I've one more treatment on Friday." He left. The hard floor and the cool, still air left no trace of him. Not even a scent so Wilson could imagine that House was still nearby.

Wilson leaned his head against the door, willing House to come back so he could shed his pathetic fear against his warm flesh. Embrace him and never let go.

The tumor was smaller, the surgery less risky. _Do the operation and House will live,_ his mind reasoned. _House might still die,_ his heart warned.

Wilson felt so heavy with grief it was difficult to get a full breath as he walked to his living room couch. Sinking into it's soft cushions, he thought and thought, coming to only one possible act. One way or another he would confront House's life or death, and his own broken conscience.

Even if it, mind or soul, killed him.

XXX

Doctor Mahn: "That was quite a dream."

"It felt like more than that. Until the moment I woke up and even a while after that, I could have sworn it was real. The tastes, the sounds, me, simple things like eating a sandwich, hearing the wind, seeing ...Greg,..touching him...felt as real as this does." Wilson rubbed his eyes. "I'm terrified I'm going to wake up again and I'll be back on that pavement seeing him under the...sheet,..knowing that's my life and he's dead."

Doctor Mahn nodded, made a few notes. "Other than the accident, before the you were hit by the bus, did something happen..earlier that day, stress, a particularly compelling patient of yours die,...an argument.? Anything that might have upset you prior to the accident?"

"I had a disagreement with Doctor House. But it was nothing out of the ordinary. We argue a lot,..we're.." Wilson knew it sounded odd, "we're best friends."

"When a person becomes like family, or even closer, barriers come down and opposing opinions are part of what we expose." Mahn cleared his throat, thinking for a moment. "What about House himself? Anything unusual about him that morning? Take your time and think over the events, everything you remember."

Wilson tried to take his mind back to that morning when House had argued with him over the lecture. It was around dinner time - he remembered that. House and he argued, House went to pour coffee, found none, slammed the pot down. _That_ had a trifle out-of-character. House, no matter how angry he got, had never in Wilson's memory resorted to physical demonstrations of anger (other than punching Chase. But that was an exception. House had been in full blown detox and out of his mind). Under normal circumstances House didn't throw things or break something or even wack his cane against a cupboard.

Once, House had hit a patient but only after the guy had hit him. He shouted, he grit his teeth, he insulted people. Wilson could hardly recall a incident, though, where _non_-detox mode House had attacked someone personally. Or attacked someone's character for no reason other than to be cruel. Wilson couldn't say that about most people. House himself was the frequent receiver of blatant unkindness. He had been publically called jerk, ass, bastard, misanthropic son-of-a-bitch. People had accused him of not caring about anyone but himself; saying he was a mean, cruel, manipulative, egotistical creep. He had even, right to his face, been called _pathetic_.

Because he rarely reacted overtly, such words were thought to be inconsequential to House. Because he appeared un-bothered by them, it was therefore thought by some acceptable to have said them. House seemed untouchable. Just as cold as the previous minute. Wilson knew differently.

Wilson shook his head. "I can't think of anyth-" Wait. Yes, there had been something. House had been favoring his leg a little more that day. Hungry enough to stay in his office and eat stale crackers instead of cane-ing his way down to the cafeteria. House once said he measured every glass of water as to whether it was worth the fifty foot trip to the bathroom. "He was in pain that day. More than usual. I didn't ask him about it. I honestly forgot all about it." _Now I know the reason. Cancer came and told me._

"It's a long shot but your mind may have been preoccupied consciously about the argument and sub-consciously about your concern for him. You took both troubles into the coma with you and tried to sort them out there. You and House have a long history?"

"About twelve, no, thirteen years."

"In light of the dream, have you and he ever been ...involved?"

"No."

"Why? You obviously have some unresolved feelings toward him, or unexplored feelings. I'm curious-"

"Because I don't believe he would share my feelings, and I don't want to risk our friendship. It would just makes things awkward."

"Can you remember another time in your life where you had such vivid dreams?"

"No."

Doctor Mahn scribbled a few notes on his ever present yellow pad. "Any sleep disturbances lately, other than the dream?"

"Not sleeping much because of House."

"The cancer?"

"Yes. He's into his last week of chemo' and the physical effects are...showing,..affecting him."

"Have you seen him?"

"Just once. Recently."

"But you said you worked on the same floor. Next door to each other."

Wilson scratched his forehead but did not respond.

Mahn nodded. Guilt had brought Doctor Wilson to him today. And grief. Both so heavy he wasn't able to stand up under them without help. Something had changed. "So you're maybe going to lose Greg again." Mahn watched his patient carefully.

Wilson kept his eyes on the carpet. A small burn hole was visible near the desk leg, reducing his vision down to its tiny black crater. Wilson thought everything good in his life would fit in that charred hole with room to spare. He couldn't contain himself and cried a little very quietly. "I'm a coward. I wanted to be there for him but I couldn't,..I, ...I agreed to do the surgery..."

Mahn studied his patient's shaking hands, clasped together trying to still themselves, Wilson's bent form, his elbows propping him up on his knees, as though to stop his inevitable fall. Mahn thought he knew Doctor Wilson's problem. Unsurprising the younger physician had not diagnosed it himself. Doctor's are notorious for minimizing or ignoring their own illnesses.

Allowing his patient a moment to gather himself, "I think you're suffering from PTSD." Mahn said.

Wilson looked up at him, considered but was unconvinced. "PT...? Stress Disorder? I don't think getting hit by a bus and spending a month in a coma would do it."

"Those aren't traumatic events?"

"Barely. How can a month of sleep be labeled traumatic? I didn't _know_ I was in a coma."

"You found yourself lost, without family or friends, without a job. Frightened in a world of unknown. Then one pleasant thing - you met and fell in love with a young man named Gregory House. Who was then killed very tragically, leaving you alone and in even worse shape." Mahn stopped, took a drink of water and finished listing his reasons for his diagnosis. He cleared his throat. "Then you woke up. House was there, things were, I'm assuming getting back to some sort of normal, _but_ you discovered Doctor House's cancer..."

Wilson was staring intently at Mahn now. _Possible? That I'm sick and not just a bastard running away?_

Mahn continued, "One or two of those events would not lead to symptoms of PTSD, but all of them? You may have only been in the coma for a month but your mind lived for a whole year in that month and experienced, for the most part, many hardships."

"That's hard to believe."

Mahn removed his glasses and waved them in the air. "You experienced, in my opinion, an Intrusion Numbing Response. Meaning too many traumatic events in succession too close together. Self-preservation becomes almost instinctive. Something like the reaction of a bird when it flies into a window. Because it has received a huge shock to its system, it _must_ therefore rest and be still until it can recover an equilibrium. Time _must_ pass until it's will returns. There was simply no other way for you to have reacted but to remove yourself from the situation. You _could not_ have acted any other way, you see."

Wilson stared at Mahn, his pen, the floor, his shoes, finally back at the psychiatrist. "Numbing Response? PTSD? From a life, from stress, lived only in my mind?"

"And from events since you've awakened, yes. This is,.." Mahn returned his dark rimmed glasses to their perch on his nose. "...extraordinary, Doctor Wilson. PTSD from events in a life that was _virtually_ lived but _not _in fact. This is, yes, this is really something. And, as far as in my experience, a first."

Wilson wondered if Mahn was going to write a paper on it.

"I'm going to write you a prescription for anti-depressants. I recommend at least two months off work, a reduction in stress as much as possible, and go help your sick friend."

"Do you think that'll help?" Wilson sincerely hoped Mahn would say yes.

"Perhaps. You've already made the choice to see him. That's a healthy beginning. You're shaking off the shock. And certainly _not_ seeing him would be no help to you now."

Wilson stood, every muscle protesting the movement. He'd been sitting in one position for over an hour, unmoving, and so stretched.

"I'd like you to come back in two weeks, tell me how things are going." Mahn said.

Wilson nodded but didn't make an appointment with Mahn's secretary on his way out.

XXX

Wilson peeked through the tiny window of House's room. In the ten weeks since he had slithered out of House's hospital room, House had been getting treatments, trying to work, trying to take care of himself, trying to cope. Wilson had heard snippets of conversations about it, Cuddy had kept him up-to-date on House as much as she could.

Between House's closed mouthed approach to any personal problem and Wilson's guilt-ridden reluctant ears, it had been quite an undertaking on her part.

Two nights ago he had gotten a glimpse of House's condition in the dim light of his foyer. But now Wilson could clearly see for himself. He opened the door very quietly and peeked in. House was asleep but looking every bit a cancer patient. Wilson hated how relieved he felt that House was not awake to see him enter. Sneak out. Run away. Sneak back in. _They ought to name a child's game after me._

Wilson softly walked to House's bedside and pushed the cushioned chair as close to the bed as he could, sitting down in it, his back to the door, his eyes to House.

The face against the white pillow was drawn. Cancer had manipulated cruel changes in his friend's handsome features. Healthy flesh had thinned beneath his dry skin. Cancer med's. Nausea. Not eating. Vomiting even what he managed to get down. Cancer med's. A sickly orange cast had shadowed his formerly fair complexion. Hyper-pigmentation. Cancer med's. Beneath the edge of his hospital gown, Wilson could see red blotches, a rash, that had spread across his chest. Cancer med's. Sores around his sensitive lips. Cancer med's.

And, finally, fatigue upon fatigue that translated into the need for many, many hours of sleep.

At least he was sleeping peacefully at the moment. Wilson punished himself with visions. House might not wake up. The med's might not be doing their job. House could lie here until he died. _House might die as you watch. You could do the surgery, do everything right, and House still could die._

Greg_ had _died. Intrusion-Numbing Response. He, Wilson, had created Greg as his dream lover and when his mind was ready to wake up, he had selected Greg for death. So there would be nothing to hold him there and everything to come back to.

House was here and alive and needed Wilson to help him stay that way. Even if, in the end, neither could. Wilson sighed very heavily.

Releasing the dream in that single breath.

He let it go.

_Goodbye Greg._

Wilson turned his eyes to House, his friend. Even if the time to look at him was short, and full of pain, he wanted that time. His soul would have to be content with that. And his heart, embrace it.

Losing House. Having to say goodbye without House even waking up again -- the possibility he could lose this man he loved and not kiss his cheek or hear one of his lame ass jokes because he had acted like a self-pitying ass - (PTSD was not a good enough excuse!) -- eased the guilt a little_. _Wilson's good deed pile had shrunk of late. Punishing himself through the self-torture of imagining he would never have House back healthy, whole and his, helped.

Agreeing to do the resection had helped Wilson shed some of the nameless fear he had been holding to his chest since waking up from his coma. He felt he could look at his friend again with a bit of light inside. Not feel like he was carrying around a false person in his heart, one without hope. One who was always looking away.

It also broke through every barrier he had tried to throw up to hide the truth of how he felt. He watched House sleep and his own soul crumbled. Wilson lay his head down on the sheet next to House's shoulder. He wrapped his right arm across House's chest and held on. Actions that would produce no miracle. House would not even feel their touch and so know he was cared about. It was a pathetic apology. He had nothing else to offer.

Wilson could not stop the tears or his desperate words. "I'm sorry." He said into the mattress. "I'm so, so sorry."

XXX

Quiet words intermixed with snuffling poked House in the mind, waking him from a deep slumber. Familiar sounds drifted into his dreams until he opened his eyes.

A dark head of hair was there, not far from his pillow. He felt the weight, not uncomfortable, of an arm across his chest. He heard the stifled sniffly choking of a gown man trying, but unable, to stop his tears. He felt the grief through the fingers clutching at the bed covers. The fear of letting go.

_Wilson has come to visit_.

House felt no resentment. None at all. He had nothing unkind stored up on the tip of his tongue, just waiting to spring it on him. House understood exactly why Wilson had not wanted to treat him. Or even see him much. The rest of the staff had whispered about it, wondered, questioned Wilson's actions. House smiled a bit, happy in his secret knowledge of things Wilson. The others weren't idiots -- he just knew Wilson far better than they did.

Maybe he didn't understand all the reasons, yet, why Wilson had spooked. But he knew enough to be okay with it. He also knew Wilson would come back. He also knew Wilson would agree to do the surgery. He possessed too refined a conscience to say no for long. He was a kind man. A good man. The best man.

His dark head blubbering into the mattress cover proved him right.

House's left hand was busy receiving chemicals into a vein via an IV, so he lay his right hand on Wilson's head, letting his fingers trail through the soft strands, losing sight of them in its thickness. At the unexpected touch, Wilson held tighter, and started muttering again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Snuffling and snorting. House sighed just a little. He would have to get the sheets changed.

"I know." He said to the dark hair that refused to lift it's guilty head and turn off the water-works. "I know."

House left his fingers tangled in the softness of Wilson's hair and closed his eyes. More sleep called urgently. "It's okay, Wilson. It's okay."

XXX

Thirteen, Foreman, Taub and Kutner listened attentively as Wilson explained to them the events about to unfold over the next weeks and months. Cuddy and Cameron had joined the group.

"We will be excising the tumor on Monday, nine AM. The chemo' therapy shrunk it significantly, but not enough to leave it there." Wilson stood by the whiteboard where house's patient's symptoms still looked out from black marks that still told them nothing.

"Because of the shrinkage and the reduced blood flow, the likelihood of metastasis is greatly reduced-"

"-but not eliminated." Cameron said.

Wilson thought she had the look of one hoping to be told differently. "No, not eliminated. We'll go in, cut out the cancerous tissue but, and here's the rub, if any of the surrounding healthy or atrophied tissue, muscle, vessels or bone, have become involved, they'll have to be removed as well. Naturally, we're hoping there's very little secondary involvement. Realistically, there's sure to be at least some."

"You mean House is going to lose more of his muscle?" Foreman asked.

Wilson nodded. "Almost certainly, yes." He shifted his feet at the implications of that for House. How fair is it that a cripple should get crippled? "House is going to have to learn to walk again." Wilson crossed his arms. "For the third time in his life. Most of us only have to learn that once."

Wilson saw Cuddy study her hands, unwilling to raise her watering eyes. She needed to be - had to be - strong.

Wilson picked up House's file from the conference table. "Now, Doctor House has made his wishes explicit. Under no circumstances are we to amputate the leg. If the secondary involvement results in greater than fifty-five percent of his muscle having to end up on the scrap heap, we are instead to leave that tissue intact and close."

"But that will mean a risk of cancer metastasis." Cameron protested. "It would be practically a certainty."

"No amputation. That's what he wants. I don't believe the decision will become necessary..."

No one else spoke.

"I've called a cancer specialist from California. He's agreed to fly out and assist."

"Are you worried there might be another sort of problem?" Taub asked.

Wilson. "No. I'm going to make certain there are no problems. No oversights." He looked directly at Cuddy. "House has paid enough for our mistakes." He turned half way around to get passed a chair that someone had failed to push in and his eyes fell across the whiteboard. Wilson read the symptoms. All of them this time, a voice in his mind saying "cancer".

But a whisper said "cancer-_like_".

Wilson asked the room without turning around, "Is this your coma patient?"

"Yes." Kutner answered.

"You've checked her for all the usual cancer markers?"

"Yes." Taub said.

"White cell count is elevated but no infections?"

"None." Thirteen said.

"Tiny nodules, waste cells settling in her joints like an auto-immune reaction - inflamation - but negative for RH factor?"

"That's right." Kutner said.

Wilson had them on the edge of their seats.

_Guess I should have been around more. Two people I might have helped sooner if I hadn't been such an ass._ "It's got to be PTEN hamartoma tumor syndrome."

Wilson turned to see them exchanging glances with each other. Cuddy spoke their one thought, "And that is..?"

Wilson was surprised. "PTEN gene mutation?" Clearly they had never heard of it. "Multiple hamartomas grow outside the bodies cells. Get shed, collect in the joints, sometimes around the heart, the uterus lining, brain stem. They're benign tumor-like free floating nodules. The reason it mimics cancer is the nodules are composed of the same cells and tissue normally found in the affected areas." Wilson turned back to the white board. "Or it might be Cowden Syndrome. It's related to HTS, but more difficult to recognize. But similar symptoms - benign tumor-like malformations in different areas of the body."

"So it's like cancer but not?" Cuddy asked.

Wilson nodded without looking around. "Yes, basically. And deadly if left untreated. She's probably in a coma because of the hamartomas building up in her brain stem. They wouldn't show on any normal CT or MRI because the density is exactly the same as the surrounding normal tissue. On a graph they would appear as only a slight thickening of the stem."

"How do we treat it?" Thirteen asked.

Wilson knew the irony of it. "As though it were cancer."

House's team rushed from the room. Cuddy straightened from where she had been leaning against the door and stepped aside to let them file out. To Wilson she said, "Glad you're back with us."

He put his hands on his hips, relaxed. Happy where he stood. "Me too."

XXX

Chapter IV will be posted soon.


	4. Chapter 4

FORWARDS, BACKWARDS AND SOMEHOW ELSE Part IV

(Sequel to Forward in Reverse)

By: GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House, present day. An exploration of what is and what might be. Pre-slash, slash, angst, and the things that transverse time and space.

Pairing: Wilson/House

Rated: M, NC-17, Mature, Adult.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I see nothing. I hear nothing! (But I adore House!)

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"SOMEONE'S GONNA BE MISERABLE SOMETIME. ACCEPT IT. THAT'S HOW I STAY SO HAPPY."

--

Paperwork had relentlessly piled up and Wilson read, filled out or signed sheet after sheet of it. His billing was two months behind and, though Cuddy had reassured him it was okay, he knew the hospital accountants were chomping at the bit to get caught up. And he needed as excuse not to go home too much.

"Take as much time as you need." Cuddy said to Wilson when he broached her on the subject.

But he didn't want to be away from House too long. It made him feel uneasy. So Wilson stayed at the hospital night after night, getting his work done, while every-so-often checking in on House.

Like he had been doing while House was getting his final chemo' treatment.

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House was retching pitifully while the chemical poisons were fed into his veins. It was horrible, painful, nauseous treatment. But it was the only thing that might stop the cancer's deadly advance. Wilson stood in the doorway. This was not the best time, he decided, to initiate one of their idle chats. House was pale, shaking and in pain. He was completely off all pain-killers but morphine to help him sleep. His liver needed to be as clean and as strong as possible if he hoped to survive the _treatment_ for the disease that was killing him.

Wilson knew how House felt. No. Wrong. He _comprehended_ how he felt. He'd seen many patients through the same process. Some lived. Many didn't. Wilson could not think about House's odds. He simply refused to entertain any notions either way.

And he knew he was a coward for it. He felt shame for shifting his feelings into neutral and keeping them there. It was ridiculous - almost childish he supposed. But he knew, absolutely, that if he allowed himself, allowed his heart, to become too tangled up in House, and House died, he would die also. It was akin to devout religious penance. As much as he hated it, he also _believed_ it to his deepest soul.

Wilson sniffed. In the room's odors of chemical-sweat and vomit, mingled Greg's scent. It drifted from House to meet what was already there in his memory, uninvited and unwanted, breaking his heart.

He watched House throw up. No one was holding his hand. A nurse was holding a basin beneath his chin and repeatedly rinsing a cloth and letting him wipe his face with it. But no other human comforts were present.

Wilson did not move from the shadow by the door. House would probably have refused his comfort anyway. Who was he kidding? Of course he would have. The last thing House needed right now was to have to expend the energy necessary to acknowledge someone else's sorrowing attempt at comfort.

Multitudes of his cancer patients had remarked to him over the years one of the hardest things was the constant expectation from others that their kind words and comforting noises be acknowledged. The comforters _needed_ to know they were helping; that _their_ awkward attentiveness was welcomed. It was the only way _they_ could deal with the cancer. Such needful people, _their_ anxiety and guilty consciences for being so healthy, crowding around a dying person became not a comfort but a burden.

House lay back on the bed, right hand clutching his thigh, left hand gripping the bed's railing like a man trying to hang on in a storm. A low moan escaped his slack mouth, his sweat-soaked face staring blindly at the overhead lights. It was the infarction time all over again. All the sweat, fear and quiet agony only this time no Stacey.

And no Wilson once again, because suddenly he was walking as fast as he could the other way. Up the stairs - didn't want to wait for the elevator. Down the halls toward his office. Inside. Close the door. Lock it. Lock the balcony door too.

Now sit in the chair and try to work. Try not to think about what his best friend was going through five floors below. Drag your mind to paperwork, billing, forms, other responsibilities and patients that need you. Anything but Greg House suffering and in pain and silently (but denying it all the way) begging for relief. Wanting to live but death was preferable than this.

Death, bloody death under a bus, wasting death eaten by cancer, couldn't be nearly so hard as the pain of living.

Wilson cradled is face in his hands and lost the struggle to win Fucked-Up Guy of the Year trophy. He ducked his head and sobbed a river of harsh, man-sized tears until he felt hollow.

Now, tears drained and shaking ended, he could go be with him. And hold his damn hand whether House wanted it or not. _I want it. _

In fact, he needed it.

_How pathetic predictable is that?_

XXX

House was at the hospital every night. And every day, confined until the surgery. He was too sick to stay at home by himself but too weak to have the operation done until they could get some meat on his bones again. House needed plumping up, and his immunities returned to a respectable level. Wilson was not going to take any chances what-so-ever at rushing the procedure until he was satisfied it was the best possible time and House was at his peak. Peak, that is, for a man with cancer.

Wilson paused in his scribbling and his mind drifted. Problem was, the longer they waited, the bigger risk they were taking. The tumor could begin to grow again. Or it could move and choke off his femoral artery, dam up the blood going to his lower leg or, even worse, blood-starve even more muscle tissue in his already ravaged thigh.

It was no good. He had to check on him again.

Only the light leaking in from the hallway fluorescents lit the room. House was asleep.

Wilson skirted the corner of the bed and the wheeled meal table. He did not want to jostle House who was getting little enough sleep as it was.

Wilson opted to stand rather than sit by him. It gave him a fuller view of his friend. Leaning over him, Wilson could see the blotches on his chest faintly through his hospital gown. The sores on his lips and chin were healing nicely. Just faint scabs now. The bumps in his mouth had gone away.

Some of House's hair had gone away too. Wilson knew House would be loathed to mention he was worried by anything so palpably vain, but Wilson knew it did bother House even more than the blotches or his skin's chemically derived "tan".

House was nearing fifty years old. Plus or minus a few months, ten years older than him. The ages they had always been relative to each other. The correct ages. House had cancer. He was sick. But Wilson saw only the man he had loved for a long time -- and fuck it if fifty didn't look _good_ on him.

Wilson let out a soft breath and House stirred a little under the sensation of it. His nose twitched and he shifted his head a little to his right, toward Wilson. His slack mouth falling open a bit. As hard as it was to sleep the whole night on his back, it was the only position that minimized the discomfort from his leg and the nausea that still threatened whenever he moved too quickly or leaned the wrong way.

Wilson studied the tired face. A memory, a real one, from a decade or more ago flashed in his mind.

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**...**House had met young Doctor James Wilson a few times and, despite the man's pathological neatness and shy, accommodating demeanor (or perhaps because of it), had come to like Wilson. And Wilson, despite House's abrasive personality and sarcastic humor, had come to enjoy House's...unusual companionship.

It was a friendship made in between consults, beers, brief marriages (Wilson's), brief affairs (House's), arguments over the food tab (House the over-all winner there), boiling discussions about House's lack of consideration for anyone and his equally worrisome habit of taking risks with his alcoholism, recreational drug use, and patients! Wilson, even to the surprise of Wilson, usually won _those_ fights.

When he learned he possessed tangible - albeit inexplicable - influence over the taciturn, nefarious, mule-headed Gregory House, he began to use it. To good use. And good feeling. Not controlling, just -- _Wow. Little ol' me?_ Secretly Wilson delighted in the little bit of control he wielded over a man everyone around him asserted was not only impossible to control but beyond understanding.

Wilson "got" House for the most part. He himself didn't fully understand why but he knew a few things.

Like: House _did_ have a conscience and morals, they just weren't run-of-the-mill: If it made the patient better, House believed, why the argument? If a little extra drink or an occasional sniff made House feel good - well - House insisted that it was his high, his body and his life.

His ideas on affection and love were less liberal. The way House looked at it, anyone who declared love too quickly isn't in love at all, just in love with the _idea_ of being in love. His philosophy was (partly), the world reeked with sentimentality and humanity would be better off if it just told itself the truth once in a while. And truth, at least for House, could often be whittled down to: People are liars, the world is hopeless and life sucked.

Laughing, though, House liked that.

It had been too long since Wilson had heard House laugh aloud. Laugh from his stomach. Guffaw like he was really enjoying himself, like he was happy, not just drunk.

When Wilson got married the first time, House tried, and failed, to be happy for him. But, damn his honesty where it counted, House had not with-held his opinion of his wife-to-be: "She's not right for you at all. She's pie-eyed with plans for home and kids and you're just lonely. And you're already bored. That dick's twitching for adventure and it isn't even on it's honeymoon yet."

Wilson had set out to prove him wrong. The marriage swiftly became a toxic wasteland, but the best part is House _didn't_ say I told you so. He just helped Wilson find a new place ("help" meaning he brought him the morning paper's rental ads) and got him drunk.

When House found a girlfriend, Wilson watched with sad familiarity as the woman started out with such high hopes only to, after a few weeks of actually getting to know the man, find her dreams trampled under House's size eleven's. House didn't want marriage. He didn't want kids, he didn't want Christmas dinner with the relations. He wanted...

Wilson had figured it out before House himself saw it.

House wanted true love. He wanted someone to care for him for exactly who he was. Not a picture of who he might become under their gentle persuasion and social brush-ups. It was the only aspect of life where Wilson was fairly certain the man would ultimately find disappointment. House had said it more than once: unconditional love was a fantasy. House wasn't a romantic -- he was a _hopeless_ in the absolute sense of the word romantic.

After seeing girlfriend number three slip away with her needs un-met, Wilson had felt a little sad for his friend. For all his bachelor bluster and reveling in the living alone thing, and a perpetual hangover his weekly companion, House was simply lonely.

One day Stacy had come along and House went completely undone crazy over her. Hard to tell by the way their first date had gone. Wilson had cringed when House had related the evenings events to him.

"Let's see: You got drunk, commented on her great tits -- describing them as "marvelous momma mounds" by the way, does wonders if you want to spend every night alone until you're fifty -- and asked her if she remembered to shave her legs. And she _didn't_ want to have sex with you after going Dutch on dinner. Hmmm, you ought to patent you're skills as a sure-fire method for rejection."

To Wilson's shock, Stacy had moved in after a week and four dates. Which must have gone rather better. If fortune favors the foolish, then cupid loves jerks.

But after the leg (things had all come down to that after all: The Leg. Like the appendage was a goddamn fleshly calendar that had marked a turning point in history), no amount of sweetness or sorry's was enough to neutralize his anger at her betrayal and lies. Size eleven's: strike four**...**

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Wilson let the memory fade as his eyes wandered over House's face. Tired lines surrounded his eyes, carved by too many disappointments, too many nights of pain.

Wilson didn't feel shy around House anymore. Not for years. They had never touched. A handshake once, when Wilson married Bonnie. House looking right through him, seeing the truth that this wouldn't last either, but this time saying nothing. Funny how that had bothered him more than his previous rude warnings of pending nuptial disaster.

He placed his right hand against House's face. It was warm and his beard hair, despite thinning, had grown out a little. Shaving had hurt the scabs too much. Caring for Gregory House took a lot out of a man, and gave a lot back. He had almost missed telling him. Waited until it was almost too late. _Just tell him._ _It shouldn't feel embarrassing. _

A long time ago he ought to have let House know, other than with tiresome lectures on what Wilson thought House needed to change so he could be as happy as his friend Wilson.

_Right._

Wilson laughed at the ludicrousness of his own self-righteousness. _I won't be a hypocrite any longer._

He kissed House's cheek very softly. Then another just on the corner of his mouth. Then indulged himself in a third one very tenderly on his lips. Wilson felt a twinge of disappointment that House did not wake up. It was just as well, House needed the rest.

A few minutes by his bedside, a feather light kiss and all the love of that "year" poured back into him like spring water into a scrubbed basin, fresh and clean and free from pain. He didn't think it would have been possible for him to love anyone more than he had loved Greg.

_Idiot!_ House would say. Wilson stood true on firm ground. Everything around him tilted yet stayed upright. Life caught up to him and he felt new. Strong. Without blinking an eye, he had been completely liberated from his grief. Just because he was standing in this spot, loving this very ill man. Wilson was complete again here, with him, and absolutely free from shame. The day was gone. A different night had arrived. A new world, another life...and he was in the midst of it, unfazed. Curious how the world can shift like that. But it was he who was unchanged. He remained_. He_ had never left. Nothing had happened but his own soul-fired torment. Nothing had shifted but his fear.

_What you do to me... _Wilson thought, _is_..._serenity_. Incredible that anyone should feel _that_ way about House. He smiled at the irony.

_The hotel was me_. Carl, the fire, the loss, the love, the Greg of his involuntary sleep. Even the Kawasaki. _All just me. _

This -- _this_ was the reality. This was his world and what a hard but treasured life it was. Nothing would take him from it again.

An old quote came to mind, _If I love you, what business is it of yours? _Wilson smiled_. _It sounded more like House than Van Goethe.

He himself preferred _I've been holding out so long..._

Wilson yawned. He'd go home for a few hours, get some needed shut eye and come in bright and early. Because he was in this life to stay.

God, it was _wonderful._

XXX

Someone had entered his room last night.

Not so unusual because lots of people had entered and exited. The nurse for one, who came in once or twice to fluff his hopelessly flat pillow, her efficient fingers checking the pulse monitor, his morphine drip, his urine bag and certain other unmentionables. The assist' surgeon had peeked in and then spoken to the nurse in the hallway. House had heard a muttered "Good night Doctor." from the nurse.

The another presence had entered, floated across the room on silent feet and stood at his bedside awhile. The heat from the visitor warmed the air around him.

The sensation of being watched did not feel in the least alarming.

For a few minutes a quiet vigil was kept. And each time -- so calming. House liked the presence and was bothered when it went away.

But then it returned and this time, his visitor's movements had felt more tenuous. Shy -- even anxious.

House wanted to open his eyes and look but couldn't, such was the cradling rest that the morphine had brought him. He felt cocooned in a fuzzy, warm blanket. But he could hear words, seemingly from a distance, spoken with kindness. And feel soft touches on his blanket, his pillow, his cheek. They were loving caresses.

When ever the gentle human presence moved, the air was disturbed just enough that House sensed it, if the body was leaning, getting closer or moving away. He could feel its breath across his scalp, teasing thin hair -- tickling him.

House wasn't certain, but thought his visitor in the night had probably been Wilson. In his dreams, Wilson told him something. Something he knew was very important, only he couldn't remember what it was. Something nice. Something very much _Wilson_, he thought.

Something had definitely spooked Wilson and House was certain, not just the cancer. But whatever it had been to drive the man away, House knew Wilson's conscience would have tortured him relentlessly. Wilson eventually would do what as necessary to redeem himself. He was too self-exacting not to. Too in denial of his own humanity. Where-as House embraced his shortcomings, Wilson ran in fear from his.

House relished in his failings. He was honest about them - flaunted them even. the other polite, say the nice things part of human existence he rejected as phoney. Genuine caring for genuine things resided in him but deeply.

As hard to reach as they were, every so often Wilson dug around until he found one like a kid on a beach discovering a buried silver dollar. He found or saw things no one else seemed to, and valued them. Wilson loved him in all his contrary parts and it baffled and flattered House. Wilson's love for him was something genuine. It did not sit atop a construct of variable conditions. Wilson liked being loving like it was a personal philosophy though it had rarely ever rewarded him. Because of that Wilson was a puzzle and a treasure.

It threw him sometimes, Wilson's looming love and scared him that he was so powerless under it. So scared that, occasionally he'd run from it. And Wilson would shake off House's rejection like dandruff off his shoulder. Wilson forgave House innumerably and cared with an intensity House had never known with anyone else and because of that, House would never be alone.

House could no more not forgive Wilson than not walk with a limp.

After a few moments of no movement, cold air filling the space in between them, House himself felt a little anxious. Had Wilson gone? House felt a bit of rising panic.

But the gentle presence had then leaned over, very close, even the hairs on his eyebrows could feel the body heat. It had touched him somehow. House wasn't sure about all of it, but he was certain that his visitor, that Wilson, had very softly kissed him on the mouth.

XXX

"Ready?" Feeling silly for asking. Wilson never-the-less fussed with the pillow until House slapped at his hand.

"The pillow isn't sick. And even if it was, they're not allowed in the O.R."

"Sorry." Wilson placed his hands loosely on the sheet. "It's going to be fine." Soothing ineptitude said to a man he knew disregarded them as meaningless. Wilson dismissed thoughts of House's disregard of anything personal. _**I **__like saying them. _

"You don't know that but thanks."

A nurse entered and removed the pillow. House lay flat and they came to wheel him into surgery.

Wilson scrubbed in and joined the specialist surgeon on loan from California.

-

-

-

-

"There is some scar tissue." She had commented upon examining the tumor and surrounding tissues. "He must have been using the leg extensively." Laura had looked at him across the surgery site.

"Some PT. Not much." Wilson confirmed.

"But walking on it? Daily?" She waited.

"Yes. With a cane."

"Fairly impressive considering the amount of pain he must have lived with."

_I think so too._

"Not many people with this type of injury tolerate it for that long without going back under the knife. Even with narcotics."

_How many people had this type of injury? _Wilson wanted to ask but Gudgeon was concentrating on a closer examination of the shwannoma.

"This should come away fairly cleanly." she said.

Wilson felt immense relief.

"Shall we?" She asked.

Wilson joined her inside House's infarctioned, cancerous leg.

-

-

-

Wilson shed the surgical scrubs and showered away the smell of antiseptic, anesthesia, and House's blood. The moment the other surgeon opened House's leg, Wilson knew he'd been right to have her there. Doctor Gudgeon was good. _She_ was very good.

Wilson had assumed the woman Cuddy introduced him to the day before was some new nurse on staff and not the specialist they had been waiting for. Old prejudices die hard. As Wilson scrubbed away the very particular odor of O.R., he let himself breath freely again. House would keep his leg. Gudgeon had found some suspicious looking tissue on one muscle. Wilson had agreed to excising the two or so ounces. No risks didn't mean some risk. House would keep his mobility, but he would be a little more crippled. Perhaps in a little more pain. But he would walk. A little slower, and with a thicker cane.

_Goddamn fuck _even so!

XXX

Deep even breathing gave way to the regular, quicker respirations of consciousness. When he opened his eyes, Wilson was there, looking down at him.

House coughed - damn respirator - and croaked, "How'd it go?"

"Better than we expected."

"Muscle loss?"

"Minimal."

House absorbed that for a few seconds, then nodded. What else was there to do? Wilson handed him a paper cup of water and he drank a little. It helped his sand-paper throat.

Wilson felt the need to quell his own uncertainties. "You'll need crutches for a while. PT. Get used to the leg again."

"You mean get used to the pain?"

"I mean-"

House tried to sit up straighter. He resisted throwing off the bed sheet to look at his bandages. He would do that later in privacy. "-Stop lying. You aren't ever going to give me another Vicodin prescription." House said resentfully but also appeared resigned to it. "You're too worried about my liver. You favorite past-time is worrying." House sighed. "I suppose my only choice now is "alternative pain management" - that's the medical community's euphemism for "live with it."

Wilson was frankly stunned that House was all but capitulating to the idea without so much as an argument. "We'll find a way so you don't have to live in pain."

House was about to argue the "we" seeing he was the only one who was going to be _in_ pain, but he was too tired and let his head loll back on the mattress. At least he had morphine for the time being. _How I've missed you. "_Whatever. Follow-up?"

Wilson listened with quiet amusement to House's question. His leg was just another differential.

Cuddy entered and walked over smiling. House stared appreciatively at her sweater. "Wow. Lace trimmed, plunging neck-line, button-up -- you went all out." Deep pink did wonders for the woman's dark crown of hair and brown eyes.

"Almost back to normal I see." She said. "_Despite_ that,.." One eyebrow on the rise. "..I'm giving you whatever time you need with pay to get better-"

"-don't let the business heels fool you." House remarked to Wilson. "She's really saying, "I wore this hot sweater just for you, baby." To Cuddy, "You know, there's a fine line between "demur", and "check out these peaches!"."

"And there's a fine line between "I say what I think." and "I'm House, a jerk who thrives on conflict."."

"You love me for it."

With Cuddy present (who needed to hear them anyway), Wilson continued his medical recommendations for House. "During your six months of PT, you'll be getting an MRI - one every three months for the first year. Every six months for five years, then one each year for the rest of your life."

"Nothing like installing confidence and hope in your patient."

"It's precautionary." Wilson asserted. "You don't want it to recur."

"I'll leave you boys to it." Cuddy said. And to House, "Don't freak out-" she leaned over and gave House a chaste peck on the cheek. "Get better House. Your position as Head Jerk will be waiting for you."

House was embarrassed but he covered it well. "My _leg's_ going to be all right too. Doesn't _it_ get a kiss?" He said at her retreating back. Cuddy turned and smiled indulgently. She was having fun.

As she left, House shouted loudly enough for anyone in the hallway to hear. "In fact, all my other parts are pretty much okay."

"Are you blushing?" Wilson asked, having his own brand of fun. He placed a paper bag beside House. "I brought you something." Cranking the bed, he helped House sit up straighter.

"It'd better be two cheeseburgers and porno." House opened the bag and drew out a flat metal thing that looked like a small laptop.

"It's a portable DVD player." Wilson clarified.

"My eyes work you know." House said but smiled in spite of himself. "You shouldn't have."

The next item was...

"Monster Truck Jam's Greatest Moments." Wilson offered.

"Here's how surprises work: they're only surprises if you _don't_ give them away." House turned it over, reading the printed commentary. "Featuring Grave-Digger"-" He looked up at Wilson as to a favored puppy. "I take that back, you _should_ have."

There was no television in the room and Wilson addressed that minor problem before House had a chance to complain about it. "You'll be moved to a private quarters before the end of the day."

House nodded. "Good. The nurses here don't kiss me at _all_."

It was clear House was pleased with the gift. Wilson was glad. One of the things he liked best was making House laugh or seeing the good light in his eyes. It was a way better reward than a thank-you for perfunctory flowers or a useless plant that would turn brown and die long before getting it home.

The thought of giving a teddy bear had crossed his mind but he had wisely squelched it.

XXX

"YOU DON'T THINK NON-ANSWERS TELL ME ANYTHING?"

--

House was only mildly surprised to see that "quarters" meant a roll away bed set up in Wilson's spacious living room. "I was thinking of the spare bedroom upstairs," Wilson hastily explained, "But I figured you wouldn't be doing stairs for a while."

House was genuinely moved. And a little alarmed. Wilson was going to nurse maid him? "You will not be giving me sponge baths." House emphasized. "Unless you wear something cute."

"Don't tempt me." Wilson smiled, but visions of House naked and soapy under his ministrations was a potent enough image that he had to excuse himself from the room for a few moments to gather his wits.

-

-

-

Three days in bed and he had begun to ripen. "I need a shower." House announced.

Wilson had assisted in taping a plastic garbage bag over House's bandages and given him a hand up the stairs. While Wilson busied himself changing the sheets on House's bed he listened to House curse his way around the bathroom. "Planning on landing an airliner in here?" House shouted down the stairs from Wilson's luxury accommodations.

Wilson liked a big bathroom. He like a big bathtub. He bought the condo for that very reason. Room to wander and a two-person tub. "Shut-up and get clean." He shouted up the stairway.

He returned to tucking in clean sheets under House's mattress. His hand brushed against something hard and cylindrical. He pulled it out curiously. A prescription pill bottle. He read the label.

"Vicodin. House, Gregory." The prescribing physician was Kutner. He could imagine Kutner's gentle personage trampled under House's demands, reluctant to say no to House's overwhelming personality.

_Vicodin._ He should have known House would not give up on his drug use so easily.

"Don't start." House said from the doorway. Wilson turned to see that House could see Wilson had found his stash.

"Don't start what? Lecturing a man who once again just skirted death back on a drug that'll eventually kill him anyway?" Wilson was sick to his stomach over it. Not the drug use, not the narcotic, not that House needed the pain-free relief or even the continuous high. It was the risk to his health Wilson hated. It was House's devil-may-care attitude to his own survival that distressed him.

Wilson knew it was useless to argue with him. Pointless to withhold the bottle. House would simply get another script elsewhere. He tossed the bottle to House who caught it easily. "Here." Wilson said and walked from the room.

House, still dripping a little and shaky for being on his feet so long, hobbled on crutches to Wilson's huge country style kitchen. Wilson was mixing a hot drink of some kind, stirring it furiously. Yelling at House would have changed nothing. Wilson could refuse to write House scripts, but he had no control over any other practitioner.

"You're _not_ going to yell some more?"

Wilson heard the squeak of the crutches rubber ends on the floor. "Would it make a difference?" His face was so weary, it gave House pause.

"You're not suppose to be walking around this much." Wilson was on automatic lecture mode. "Get back to bed."

"No." House said. "You refused to stay and finish the argument and that is so unlike you, it'll give me nightmares."

Wilson tossed the spoon into the sink with a clatter. "Sure it will."

House hobbled in, brushing passed Wilson and seated himself on a high stool by his massive center island. Marble, House noted. Very expensive. Wilson did have a very nice place.

Wilson sniffed. Was House wearing cologne? "What is there to talk about?"

"Not the Vicodin."

Wilson stared at him, a little irritated. "Then what? House, I'm very tired and you're supposed to be resting your leg. Do you want it to swell?"

Wilson stepped away from his counter and joined House at the island, but he didn't sit. He stood stiffly. A mild conveyance of "I'm too pissed at you to sit with you right now, so don't ask."

Wilson sipped his drink and sighed, rubbing his eyes. "What the hell do you want to talk about?"

"Things."

Wilson frowned and checked his watch. "Things?" Nervously, Wilson watched House watch him. It was a weird, silent conversation, all done with eyes.

"I've got to get to sleep." Wilson said again feebly. He knew he sounded pathetic. In fact he wasn't that tired, but after weeks of constant worry for his best friend he simply had no idea what to say to him that didn't involve himself screaming bloody murder or bawling like a lost sheep.

House tapped a crutch between his legs. Nice legs, Wilson thought. That's one physical aspect of House he had always admired, and felt a little jealous of, House had some damn sexy legs. For a few seconds Wilson looked at those legs. House had taken to wearing jogging shorts to bed instead of his usual pajama bottoms. Easier access to the bandages.

"Why did you stay my friend all these years?" House asked. "I'm a jerk."

Wilson had to think for a few seconds. This was House and he was chock full of curiosity about pretty near everything on the planet but it always lead somewhere. Secretly only half joking, "Um,...you look good in jeans?" He scratched his head, a little uncomfortable with the conversation. "Why did you stay friends with me?"

"Because you're an easy mark for food, money or dinner out. And you look good in ties but only when I pick them."

"You've never picked out my-"

House said in a tone more suited to a discussion about the weather, "--and because I love you."

Wilson grew roots in his feet, metaphorically, anchoring him to the spot. The silence became choking but he couldn't so much as twitch at a time when all he wanted to do was run like hell. Flee in terror. Not given to well thought out reasoning when it came to love or House, he had to laugh at himself. Flee in terror is what he ought to have done the first three times in his life someone had said that.

Instead he - all three times - had rushed off to arrange very expensive parties with friends, wear stiff, uncomfortable clothes that made him look like a land-locked penguin and say words he didn't really mean.

Just so he could - all three times - rush off to an even more expensive event before a judge, wear other stiff, uncomfortable clothes, and say things he really _did_ mean. Like: This was a mistake and I'm an idiot!

But house saying those words...left him tongue tied and throat dry. Closed up his mind and made his heart pound in his chest. Yes, he loved House. God, did he love him. Real love, this time, to someone real. Not Greg and not his three wives who had been almost an unreal as Greg had been. It was House this time, and House was saying it to _him_.

_And I'll probably still manage to fuck it up._

But, just to give himself some slack, he couldn't be sure to what sort of love House was referring. Brotherly? Uber-friend? Sappy, the "I love you, man" between drunks kind?

But House wasn't given to brotherly displays of affection and sappy was light years from anything remotely descriptive of House.

Wilson knew one thing clearly: he ought to walk over there and...but his feet just wouldn't move. Finally his jaw did. "W-what..?"

House sat there patiently looking at him with those big, blue, nakedly honest eyes and Wilson felt as annoyed as hell. _Goddamn_ the man for being so goddamn _honest_ while swallowing those _goddamn_ Vicodin while looking so goddamn _sexy_ when he himself was feeling so goddamn _vulnerable_.

Wilson was angry. House was the sick one, the one who was in a position of dependance and yet House could turn him upside-down with just a look. Wilson rubbed his face. It irritated the _hell_ out of him.

With Wilson's silence, House's shoulders slumped just a little more and his eyes returned to the floor, the rubber tip on his crutch tapping out a discordant rhythm.

Wilson shook himself from inaction. _This cannot happen now_. In fact, Wilson rebelled at the thought. He'd spent months beating back his feelings, stifling his emotions, choking the life out of them by every means necessary. And now House pulls this! Was this some kind of fucked up _joke?? _

"Get to the punch-line." Wilson blurted, horrified at himself.

Anyone else would have reacted with hurt, anger, insult, embarrassment, maybe rushed from the room, maybe apologized, cried even. Not House. He just sat there passively staring at Wilson until Wilson stared back long enough for it to dawn on him that House was speaking the truth. _Oh Christ!_

House was analytical even when it came to his own feelings. He'd studied the symptoms, come to a diagnosis, decided on treatment and implemented it. Like he always did. He wasn't elaborating for Wilson which symptoms had lead him to this conclusion or when he'd reached it. Once decided, he had simply acted. House was a diagnostician to his collar bone.

"Sorry." Wilson half whispered, half choked.

House nodded, still waiting. Still tapping his cane, still staring. "I know it doesn't change anything. I know you don't feel the same, maybe I've made things uncomfortable. But I wanted to say it before..."

_Don't say it. Don't fucking say it._

"...in case this...my cancer does recur."

Wilson swallowed a lump that was threatening to choke off his air. Fucking cancer. Wilson suddenly looked at his speciality in a whole new way and hating it. Arbitrary, unfeeling disease eating away at House. Very, very slowly, trying to kill him. They may have won this battle. But Wilson knew from experience, it was probably only the first skirmish.

Wilson's silence conveyed a message to House that he should go to bed so he decided to do just that but on his hobble out of the kitchen stopped by Wilson's shoulder. Wilson thought for a second House was going to kiss him, try to prove it was true or convince him to reciprocate via some very intimate physical persuasion.

But House didn't touch him, he simply said, "And, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have got through this, if you hadn't..." Instead of finishing the sentence, House crutched to the living room and to bed. Settling in, he called to Wilson who had not moved from his foot-frozen spot "'Nite."

Wilson heard a very distinct "que sera sera" in that tiny sentence.

After retreating to his room, Wilson all but collapsed onto his bed. His strength left him and he doubled over, his eyes coming to rest on his four soft pillows. For weeks -- months -- he had desperately avoided thinking about House (and often failing) in the romantic sense and now, like a bomb dropped, without even understanding how it had happened...

Wilson was unnerved as to how this had come about. The world was turned up-side-down-and around. Forwards was backwards and backwards was...somehow else.

It was the second time House had said those words, but the question remained. What sort of love? 'Course, he could have asked...if his whole body had not been shaking and his mind had not been stumbling through twisted brambles of doubt and fear.

-

-

-

-

_..."Greg, Greg, oh fuck!..." Wilson rubbed himself over the other man's body, feeling his bursting need to come at Greg's moan of pleasure. Wilson, eyes squeezed tight in ecstacy, kissed Greg hard on the mouth and slowed his movements, finally sliding out of Greg's warm body and resting his head on the soft skin of his shoulder. "I fucking love you so much..." He whispered._

_Wilson opened his eyes to see Greg's brilliantly blue ones staring up at him from behind tired lids and skin blushed with a chemical haze. His hair had greyed and lost its luster. His expression was harder, etched with troubles and so little joy. Wilson looked down and saw Greg-but-House's face, spent with years but sleepy with satisfied sex... _

-

-

-

-

Wilson awoke in a sweat. He felt immediately his uncomfortable erection in his pants. He was alone in his bedroom. He had fallen asleep. How many hours had gone by?

The more intelligent question was: why he was huddling in his bedroom alone when he could be down there, in his living room, eating House up with his lips?

Wilson changed into his own pajamas and went down his stairs to the dark living room, glancing at the kitchen stove clock on his way by: Three-thirty-seven AM.

House was asleep on his back. A sheen of sweat covered his face. The Vicodin had worn off in the night.

Wilson had come down to wake him up and speak things, touch and kiss him. Say the words back and make love to him. But he didn't have the heart to wake him up. Instead he very carefully climbed in beside him and lay an arm across House's chest.

Wilson studied his face in the semi-dark. Only the glowing face of his chiming clock on the mantel revealed those features he knew so well. And in those angles and valleys he again saw Greg. The young, vibrant beauty of him superimposed over the weary, world worn older man's.

House shifted in his sleep then settled down again. Soon his breathing eased as a deeper state claimed him. Wilson pulled the twisted blanket over them both. He nestled his face into the crook of House's neck and closed his eyes.

Wilson didn't care if House had meant brotherly love or drunk love. It didn't matter anyway. He loved House so much it hurt. A good hurt. Something he wanted no matter how long or short a time it might be. If House woke up and asked him to leave, he would. If he didn't, then Wilson would have answer enough. He quickly fell into a dreamless sleep.

XXX

House never said a word about Wilson's midnight invasion of his bed, and Wilson wondered if House even realized it had happened. Perhaps their mutual need for physical closeness transcended social conformity.

House was just at the starting line of recovery, still underweight, still "tanned" from his endless weeks of chemical treatments, and confined to Wilson's very neat, very clean, very dull condo. So, at House's request, Wilson drove to House's apartment the next day to gather a few things House wanted. Like "Some decent music CD's, my guitar and Steve." Cameron had been caring for the little rat, but House was worried about him. Wilson didn't dare tell House how heart warming it was to see House so attached to the little guy. _Heartless jerk, my ass!_

Wilson wandered around House's dark livingroom. No need to switch on a lamp, he knew every join in the dark hardwood, every slight variation in the wear of the path House walked when in pain, each corner of the coffee table and stereo/television entertainment center, and precisely where the piano's curved legs jutted out to bump his knees.

Many times over the years Wilson had paced this particular path , leaving behind his own invisible footprints in the dull finish and a faint trail of dust down the hallway. House hadn't been home to sweep or vacuum for weeks. Wilson's feet wandered aimlessly and stopped in front of House's heavily laden book shelves. Medical books; Grey's Anatomy, General Principles of Tumor Immunotherapy, Immunology, Biochemistry, Epidemiology, Endocrinology, Metabolism, Hematology, Microbiology, Infectious Disease (one of House's two pets), Oncology (his own pet), Physiology, Radiology...tomes of learning particular to their chosen profession.

...All these and he could do very little to ensure House would stay healthy. A century of knowledge and House's life still depended so much on chance and possibility. Maybe's and hopes. _If_ the chemotherapy had done its job, _if_ the resection was successful, _if_ no new cancer appeared, _if_ House's body coped with the possible long term damage to his liver, _if_ all the aforementioned didn't, somewhere down the line, tank his kidneys, House might live. He might live for years.

Or, despite all the learning, years gaining experience, building flesh upon thin bones of medical school acquired knowledge, and all of North America's oncological training and treatment applications, another tumor could invade House and he might die.

Wilson's eye fell upon a different book. Photo album. He opened it, flipping idling through pages of an unsorted past. Mostly recent photos of Wilson and House and Stacy and House save for one or two pictures of House from a few years ago, prior infarction, at a hospital function (House attended those more often back then), drinking at a table and toasting the cameraman.

On the next page a stark picture of House's leg post surgery. A close-up of the scar and the maimed flesh that would be with him for life. Wilson himself had taken that picture. He'd forgotten about it. Some physicians recorded the anatomical details of their surgeries - pre, intra and post - for discussion and observation down the road. Wilson had absconded with the pictures and shown them to House. House had looked then tucked them among his personals without comment.

This is where House had stored them.

On the next page was a picture so in contrast with the bloody image of a violated leg, Wilson held his breath. It was House. Younger. Much younger, a man just out of medical school. A man in his prime of life, health and hope.

Wilson removed the photo from the sticky backing of the album with the care of an antique restorer who had just discovered a long lost treasure. In the picture Greg House was standing in a nameless hallway with a loose collection of people, men and women, seven in all, some with their hands slung over each other shoulders, other posing stiffly...

...Greg standing alone, looking off camera, a smile just showing bright, even teeth. He was wearing a doctors coat. Probably his first. It might have been the first day of his specialty internship. Everyone recorded such milestones. Someone had taken the picture and undoubtedly each person, including House, had received a copy.

Wilson was sure he had never seen this picture. Then he remembered.

Stacey had given the photo to him. She had been sorting through pictures a few days before walking out of House's life and thrust it into his hand. "Here." She had said. Wilson could remember the guilt and anger in her words and the shame in her voice. "Here's a picture of Greg before I "wrecked him", to use his words. You keep it."

Stacey gave no reason for the gift. Perhaps she couldn't bear to look at it. Maybe she was afraid to leave it behind for Greg to see and remember a time he wasn't leaning on a cane, nursing a broken life.

Wilson hadn't felt right keeping it and had stuck it back in House's album, forgetting about it. The sad memories flooded back from that time. There had been nothing to do that would have made a difference. Numerals one plus one equals three is easy to fix. Delayed diagnosis plus muscle death minus sorry we fucked up equals permanent damage. No erasers made for that.

But the picture in his fingers was Greg. The young, whole bodied man he had loved. And it was House sleeping at his place, trying to recover from months of therapy and surgery and now in bandages once more, waiting to see if he might be allowed some semblance of his old, _old_ life back again - the post-infarction-pre cancer one.

How many times was the coin of this man's existence going to be flipped?

The picture packed a wallop. Wilson's mind drifted to House now, his face haggard from chemicals pouring through his cells, exhausted from sleepless nights spent in pain, from throwing up most of the food that he had somehow forced passed the gagging side effects. Thin House. Sick House. Older House with bright blue eyes looking back from the pillow wearily. Cracked lipped House cracking a joke anyway.

That juxtaposed against this young, fresh, power-packed House who looked in innocense to the future, the deadly details of his future unseen. Un_-imagined_.

Greg in the yellowed photo, yellowed House in his sick bed. Two imperfect haves that made him whole.

Greg House, his lover, was alive and well.

XX

As he delivered Steve into House's anxious hands, all Wilson said was "You know, that icy exterior isn't fooling anyone."

House placed Steve's cage carefully on the floor by his bed. "If I wasn't an unfeeling jerk, I'd be offended by that. And, by the way, that simpering grin doesn't hide your embarrassment over what I said the other day."

Wilson swallowed hard as he hung up his jacket in the front closet. "House, I-"

When he turned, House was standing directly behind him, leaning on his crutches. Already he was ambling around a little easier, working the leg, making it build muscle. The Vicodin had something to do with that, Wilson realized.

Wilson waited nervously under House's hard stare. Lamely, "It's the nearly middle of the night." He tried to step around House who was just mobile enough to move and block his way.

Even at his most screwed up Wilson was still best friend. There was no reason thick enough to be annoyed at him. Still...House said "You're an idiot."

Despite the insult, Wilson stood with a toe-in-the-sand look on his face. If he had worn a hat, he would be twisting it in his fingers. House suddenly felt bad for Wilson, which was totally backwards since Wilson had been the one most recently acting like a jerk. But no one did silent suffering like Wilson and he was giving his Oscar performance right now.

Wilson hadn't raised his dewy brown eyes off the dusty floor since stepping in the door. The pathetic tragedy standing before him was - really - comic. House had the urge to snap his fingers in Wilson's face with a patronizing,_ "Hey! -- up here."_

But Wilson seemed on the point of a major crying jag. House hoped like hell he was wrong about that. "Look, Wilson-"

"--I've been, I was seeing a psychiatrist." He blurted.

House opened his mouth, then shut it quickly. That was unexpected news but, considering Wilson's squirreli-ness of late, not wholly out-of-probability. House nodded. "Good." Yes, it was. Damn good.

Wilson's eyebrows twitched up a bit. One little wiggle from those thoughtful caterpillars and often no words would be needed. But he said them anyway "It is?"

House could see Wilson wanted to spill his guts right there on the blue-stain hardwood. "Yes and you don't have to explain." Or _cry._

But of course he did. "I couldn't handle seeing you with...seeing you like," He gestured vaguely in House's direction, "..this. I,...I just..."

House saved him the agony. "I'm glad you went to a shrink."

Wilson's eyebrows said "You are?"

"Yeah. Because if he helped you, _is_ helping you figure some things out, so you know better what you're doing and not such an idiot all the time...If he's getting it through your thick head that it's more than just some idea of happiness, some neediness haywire in your brain or finger-painting in your head of what you think it ought to be..." _Now I'm babbling. Must be contagious_.

Wilson was thoroughly confused. No eyebrow movement at all.

House started again. It was his turn to spill. It was his wounded feelings after all. His stinking cancer. He sleep being delayed by a clueless man and it was his damn middle of the night! "If you can't be sure," House spoke like it meant it, "then I can't go there,.. I can't go through this,...this cancer, and whatever the hell else only to watch you walk out near the end or shortly after when it's too _uncomfortable_ for you, or when your _penis_ gets restless or your _conscience_ starts smarting..."

House took a breather. He was beginning to tire of the confession session. But at least thee was a faint dawning of light in Wilson's hopeless eyes. "You're seeing a shrink. I'm _glad_ about that because I have to be sure, before..."

Wilson whispered, desperate to understand. To hope. "Before...what?"

House gripped his cane like a street urchin would his sole possession. He stepped closer, raising his left arm to touch Wilson. "Before..." He stopped when he saw his own cancer pigmented skin. His hand was turned an unhealthy, unflattering _beige_. House knew what he looked like because he'd spent countless hours staring in the mirror at the narrow facsimile of his face looking back. A thin, wasted, drained face. Thinning hair, red rimmed eyes and colorless lips set into a grimness that had come to mark his daily calender.

The cancer was gone, yes. Hopefully beaten. But it had beaten him hard in the process. He was tired of the struggle just to find a good reason to get up. He was tired of hospitals and pitying stares and people with pasted smiles. And the pain. He was sick of the pain and more pain. There was only one thing that might fix some of it. Repair him enough to feel happy again.

"Wilson,..." he said. The words just were not there, not even on the tip of his tongue.

But Wilson was looking back with such intensity, with that incredibly caring, soul-piercing stare that he had. Wilson was the only one who could shame him, embrace him or dismantle him with a well timed glance. He was the only one House let get away with it. "You frustrate the hell out of me!" House snapped, but dropped his eyes quickly, shaking his head. He had never done this before. Not even with Stacey.

"What do you mean,..."before"?" Wilson asked quietly.

House closed the gap between their bodies and lay his hand on Wilson's cheek, running his thumb over his right eyebrow, as though to smooth it. He could see and feel Wilson's shock and pleasure.

"Before..." House said but forgot what he wanted to say. Words didn't hold enough meaning. Weak things. House pressed strong lips against Wilson's mouth. Suspended the kiss for a few tasty seconds. When Wilson leaned into the kiss, House knew he understood. There was no doubt now.

House's tired heart settled into a pleasurable rhythm. So much more he wanted to give but--

--He broke the kiss and stepped back a little. Gingerly touching his bad leg, and almost apologetically said, "Right now, that's all I can give you." House held his breath but before Wilson opened his mouth all the way to answer, he added, "_Mean_ it. _Mean_ it or don't say it." House pleaded silently for a certitude.

Wilson stared at his friend. Greg. House. Physician. Wilson saw through the years and hard times to the young man he had (in some way) known. The fun, sexy lover. And in him he saw looking back the older, jaded, man whom pain had chiseled. They were both there -- Young, vivacious Greg. Laughing, animated Greg. Beautiful, ardent Greg. And older, tired House. Jerk House. Sick House. Gentle eyed, stooped, crippled House. Impassioned, endearing House. Wilson looked at both faces until they astonishingly merged into one. Until he could no longer tell them apart. Wilson loved both and he said it to both:

"I'm in love with you." He meant it.

Wilson kissed him back. _Holy God, do I mean it._

XX

"Before we do this, I want you to remember something." House said. "I am who I was going to be, infarction or not. Maybe it changed me in some way. Or maybe the cancer will, but not enough to make much of a difference...I-"

"-I know." Wilson finished for him. "Your leg hurts, you drink. It doesn't hurt, you drink. Vicodin's your best friend and you're an ass in any decade."

"That's right, except for the Vicodin part.'

"So what are you saying to me exactly?"

"I exactly saying if I'm not want you want, then I never will be. People become who they are no matter what happens to them. I'm hard wired to be a jerk." House gestured to Wilson's head. "You're hard wired to be a loving, tolerant, enabling, super guy. That's what I love about you and that's why you're so good for me. So far, you're the only person on the planet who loves me _despite_ me."

Wilson listened with something akin to rapture. On the subjects of love and feelings, it was the most words House had ever spoken.

House finished quietly, "And I'd be a stupid ass not to be interested."

Wilson broke down a little. Just a tear or two and he wiped them away quickly before they fell. Before House saw, changed his mind and bolted from the room. Wilson felt like a fool. Twice in as many years -- not too bad he supposed. He drew House into a gentle and very intimate embrace, then kissed him on the mouth.

And that mouth, even whiskered and older, was Greg's. Wilson looked around his condo. Not an edge was out of perspective. Not a displacement of light. The air of his world had stayed the same. "Come on." He said. "My bedroom tonight." And he helped House up the stairs.

-

-

-

-

Without disturbing his very tender, sensitive thigh, Wilson helped House remove his Tee-shirt, leaving his boxers on for now. House looked at dismay where pink stained fluid had leeched through the bandages. He moved to unwrap them when Wilson stopped his hands.

"I'd like to do that." And Wilson carefully unwound the thick gauze until the still fresh wound was exposed. Though now stitched up, it was evident the scar would be deeper, more pronounced. House stared, his face unreadable, and the brand that would never go away.

Wilson assuaged him before he had a chance to think about it too much. "It's just a scar, House."

"Yeah. I'm taking up a collection."

Wilson kissed him. "I don't care if your body is a road map, you're so sexy, it makes me weak." Wilson gestured to his underwear that were baggier now that he had lost so much weight. "I'll need to clean the incision, so those'll have to go." Wilson looked at House's chest. His rib cage was just visible. "You're twenty pounds underweight, House. I'm going to start stuffing you with potatoes and pork chops."

Using his arms House lifted himself partway off the bed to wriggle out of his boxers. "Just don't start anything that, right now, I can't finish."

Wilson cleaned the incision, applied a new bandage, then helped House lay down on his king-size bed. He undressed to his boxers and lay down beside House, head on one hand, looking at him tip to toe, making House squirm a bit under the scrutiny.

"Don't say I'm the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen, we both know it's bull." House said. He sounded weary.

Life weary, Wilson thought. "So I like your body? Why do you have a problem with that?"

House sighed. "S'not a _problem_."

"Then what? I love your chest, your stomach, your legs, your throat and especially-"

"-you dirty doc'!"

"I dream about it, House. I fantasize when I'm at work, at lunch, talking to a patient, pretty much all the time." Wilson lay his free hand, palm down, on House's stomach, rubbing in slow circles, teasing the fine hair beneath his fingers. Starting with the smooth skin above his nipples, he let his hands wander lower until rounding his navel a few times, sometimes lower than that, teasing the soft line of hair that tempted a path to far more tantalizing areas, but stop his hand short and travel up again.

"I love your skin, too." Wilson leaned over and kissed his stomach in tiny spots all over. "All of you." From House's flesh Greg's smell rose like a garden. An ancient, sexual perfume, making his own cock twitch with desire. It was Greg's particular scent, all over him. All over House. It was House. And Greg. And they were his. "When you're strong enough, I'm going to do...o-o-o..so many things to you." Wilson whispered.

House met his eyes then. "At last I get to learn the Wilson Way."

"Will, my wives didn't mind me."

"I know."

Wilson paused his kissing. "How do you know?"

"Bonnie confessed. Said you were a magician in the bedroom. You better be. I gave up a perfectly good miserable bachelor-hood for you."

Wilson smiled and kissed him.

_It's good to be home._

XXX

**END**

XXX.


End file.
